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Bengal: Forest top brass spat hits green drive
Posted by Labels: Bengal, Forestry, PoliciesThe chief minister's ambition to turn Bengal "greener" has gone for a toss with two top-notch bosses jostling for authority at the state forest department. The tug of war at the helm has paralysed the ground-level work to such an extent that the department is not even hopeful of achieving 40% of its afforestation target this year.
Hit by a decision-making deadlock, a majority of 500-odd nurseries across the state has not yet started working on seedlings. According to officials, the chance of survival of the saplings is slim unless they are four-month old. However, there are only three months to go before the annual afforestation programme in the state. Around 7 crore saplings are needed for a year's afforestation programme, so the department is bound to fall short this year as work is yet to start on saplings and the stock is not encouraging either. In Kolkata alone, around 1 crore saplings are planted every year.Senior forest department officials held the chaos and confusion in the state forest directorate responsible for this state of affairs. Since last year, there has been uncertainty over the command of the directorate. While Atanu Raha was made the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) and head of the forest force (HoFF), his authority was challenged by the seniormost PCCF M A Sultan in Calcutta high court, which ruled in the latter's favour.
Last month, Sultan was appointed the PCCF and the HoFF and Raha was relegated to the post of additional PCCF. However, within days the state government again elevated Raha to the PCCF post and transferred all power to him. Now, Sultan is the statutory head of the directorate without any power and Raha is all powerful without any statutory authority.
Sources in the forest department said there was complete lack of direction even before the fund for seedlings was up for distribution in October last year. Most divisional forest officers (DFOs), who directly supervise nurseries and timber harvesting, played safe. So, work at the grass-root level came to a complete standstill.
Afforestation is directly linked to harvesting of timber. This year, the Centre has approved harvesting of 10,000 hectares, which means there will be afforestation on 10,000 hectre. Timber harvesting is an important economic activity for people living in and around the forests who work in forest protection committees.
The situation was equally distressful last year, when the directorate could not achieve even 30% of timber harvesting because of delayed fund allocation. ABut the problem is that in course of time, there will be a lot of tree felling without compensatory plantation.
An official in the finance wing of the department admitted that afforestation might be affected unless corrective measures are taken. However, officers said not much could be done now as there's hardly any time left for working on saplings.
Worse, this time, the government is changing the whole system of financial power in the directorate. From April, the government will issue letters of credit. So getting the fund in the first and second week of the month will be remote and the entire work will get stuck for paucity of funds. If the work gets stuck and saplings die, the DFOs will be held responsible. So they prefer inaction in this regard, said another officer.
Times of India
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