Ultimatum: ‘Lift ban on sale of Timber or prepare for legal battle’

Timber worth millions rotting in.

GILGIT:

Lawmakers hailing from Gilgit-Baltistan’s (G-B) Diamer valley have served on ultimatum to the government: allow transportation of impounded timber rotting in Chilas or let the issue be settled in court.

“If the government cannot take a decision on this issue, we will be forced to approach the courts for justice,” opposition leaders including Bashir Ahmed, Haji Gulbar, Rehmat Khaliq and Janbaz Khan told the media in Gilgit on Tuesday.

Hundreds of feet of timber have been lying unattended alongside the Karakoram Highway in Chilas for as much as a decade, following the imposition of a ban on lumber movement. The purpose of the ban was to discourage illegal logging in Gilgit’s Diamer valley, which was once Pakistan’s biggest forests reserve. The ban came after wide-scale commercial deforestation stripped much of the area bare.

The legislators claimed that the present political setup in G-B has failed to safeguard the public interest and does not seem to have any intensions of doing so in future.

“In the past, a loss of Rs200 million was caused to the national exchequer as 400,000 feet of timber was taken out of Diamer instead of 80,000 feet,” said Bashir Ahmed, a senior PML-Q member, who is also opposition leader in the G-B assembly.

The movement of timber in huge quantities from Chilas to other parts of the country was made without payment of tax and royalty to the owners, Ahmed complained, adding that they will sue the government for this injustice if it ignores their demands.

Janbaz Khan, a senior PML-N lawmaker, said that people of Diamer have been reeling under the impact of inflation and unemployment, adding that imposing an embargo on the transportation of timber was tantamount to a violation of the human rights of locals.

G-B Health Minister Haji Gulbar, a JUI-F lawmaker, said that people in Diamer will suffer badly if the ban is not lifted.

They said the timber was rotting due to heat and moisture and if the government didn’t lift the ban, both, the people and the government will be the losers.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2011.