Valuable wood of various species including 3,01,963 cubic feet of teak stored in Rangamati district through legal alliance permits with a market value of around Tk 100 crore is being wasted under sun and rain in the open air for three long years at various depots in Barkal upazila of Rangamati district.
As a result, the concerned timber traders including the garden owners in Barkal Upazila, the common people involved in it and the day laborers have been living year after year in an extreme uncertainty due to the extreme financial hardship.
Timber traders of Rangamati are blaming the local forest department for this miserable condition. According to them, this situation has arisen due to non-cooperation and arbitrariness of the forest department. Therefore, they have warned that they will take recourse to the law soon.
According to the relevant sources, out of 159 Mouzas under Rangamati circle, there are 26 Mouzas in Barkal upazila. In 11 of these Mouzas, the work of alliance permit, i.e. timber trade, has been closed for the last three years due to some reason. The forest department authorities are not explaining to the traders.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts South Forest Division Authority under Rangamati Forest Circle has issued a total of 61 free alliance permits at various times since 2016. In accordance with that permit and in accordance with all the official rules of the Forest Department, these stored timbers were cut from the land owned by different persons and stored on the road and river by the small deer in the shops and adjoining area of 12 BGB zone.
These stocked timbers include teak, gamma and Kadai. As these timbers have been under the open sky for many years, more than half of them have been burnt by the sun and soaked in the rain.
For some reason, the forest department authorities are not giving permission to the concerned timber traders to transport and market these legally collected timber.
As a result, the concerned hill-Bengali traders, who are involved, have invested millions in transporting and marketing the stockpiled timber at the right time and are now on the way to begging, said the timber traders.
Md Shah Alam, president of Barkal Timber Traders Cooperative Society, said, "The forest department is not cooperating with us. They do not issue D-forms whenever we approach the Forest Department for approval of D-forms for transporting stored timber. In this situation, in the last three years, almost five of our woods have been damaged. We will be suing the forest department soon and we will get our money back with compensation. We don't want wood anymore.”
Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the same association, said the timber was stockpiled through fully valid documents. However, they do not know why the forest department is not cooperating in the transportation. Because of which the timber trade is closed and the stored timber cannot be transported and marketed.Abdul Jalil demanded the government to immediately open a timber business in Barkal Upazila.
At the same time, timber traders Nurul Alam, Sohrab Hossain, Zahir Uddin Talukder and Bakhtiyar Uddin Chowdhury have made the same demand, saying that they have applied to the Prime Minister, President and Forest Minister to open timber business in Barkal.
Bindu Chakma and Pulin Chakma, similar to the local carver, similarly demanded the government to open a timber business in Barkale.
Asked about this, Md Rafiquzzaman Shah, Divisional Forest Officer, Chittagong Hill Tracts, said, "We are cooperating with the timber traders. But they are the only ones who know why they are not able to bring the stored timber. The allegation they are making is not correct.”