PAC sub-committee suggests punishing forest officials for abuse of authority

Kathmandu, Sept. 24

A subcommittee formed under the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Federal Parliament has suggested taking stern action against at least six senior forest officials from the states and districts for abusing authority and misusing forest resources.

It has requested the PAC to direct the government to conduct further investigation into the issue and punish the responsible authorities who supported in preparing fake decisions and documents that contributed to deforestation and ecological accidents.

The subcommittee formed to study the 'Scientific Forest Management Programme' and led by Pradip Yadav and represented by Prem Bahadur Ale and Mina Subba has submitted the report to the house panel last month.

According to the report, State Forest Director of the Sudurpaschim Hemraj Bista, and Divisional Forest Officers (DFOs) in Pahalmanpur Krishna Dutta Bhatta, DFOs in Dhangadhi Ram Chandra Kandel, in Kanchanpur Ajaya Bikram Manandhar, in Taulihawa Ishwari Prasad Poudel, in Nawalpur Bijaya Raj Subedi, in Kamalamai Narayan Shrestha, and in Marin Pushpa Raj Bartaula were found directly misappropriating the forest resources.

Many of these officials have colluded with the sawmills and woods traders in felling down the trees during the forest monitoring and authenticated the illegal cutting of the trees.

"They have knowingly approved the fake documents prepared by the community forests, users' groups general meetings, members of the forest users' group and forest officials. This is an activity against the Environment Protection Act, 2010 and Forest Act, 2019. This is the embezzlement of the national resources," read the report.

According to the report, Bhatta of Divisional Forest Office, Pahalmanpur and Kandel of DFO Dhangadhi of Kailali were living a high-standard life beyond their actual capacity with the illegal money they earned in collusion with the sawmills and wood traders. Kandel had issued orders to chop down the trees ignoring the continuous requests from the forest users' group to halt the act.

Likewise, Subedi of DFO in Nawalpur district had abused his authority by creating unusually wide forest road and fireline in the forest areas. Subedi, Shrestha of Kamalamai of Sindhuli and Bartaula of Marin of Sindhuli also ordered to cut the trees in the ecologically vulnerable Chure region.

The subcommittee has also found that the Ministry of Forest and Environment, states' Ministry of Industry, Tourism, Forest and Environment, provincial forest directorate, forest offices and forest users groups were not submitting the appropriate documents rather than they were hiding or damaging them, providing fake and fabricated data. Many districts never submitted the asked documents and data to the sub-committee.

"The PAC should direct the MoFE to create a reliable and integrated information management system to address such maladies," recommended the subcommittee.

Instead of providing the technical support to the community and collaborative forests as per the laws and bylaws, the forest offices have been found unusually providing hundreds of thousands of rupees to the consultants while the consultants prepared the reports without making a single trip to the field. Most of the work procedures and action plans prepared by such consultants were fake and misfit.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 25 September 2020.