MP Pathirana reveals ruse resorted to by unscrupulous businessmen to grab forest lands

By Saman Indrajith

 Matara District SJB MP Buddhika Pathirana told parliament yesterday that unscrupulous businessmen had found a way to dupe officials by clearing patches in the middle of the jungle to plant tea and wait for a couple of years to clear the surrounding areas in the jungle.

 “When the officials commence investigations, they claim their tea plantations have been there for a long time,” MP Pathirana said, asking government to probe such incidents and take action to protect the forest cover.

 Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera said that he would look into the matter and admitted that continuous increase of population and some human activities had resulted in the shrinking of forest cover in the country.

 Asked whether he would admit that the North Central Province had already been reduced to semi-arid area, the Minister said that not only the NCP but many other provinces in the dry zone of the country had suffered from a long-drawn out drought between 2015 and 2018, but the NCP had not become a semi-arid are.

Minister Amaraweera said some regions in the country were affected by natural disasters such as floods, drought, landslides etc., all the time due to ill-effects of climate change.

Asked whether steps would be taken to develop national policies for environment conservation, Minister Amaraweera said that there were already many national policies in that regard as follows: National Environment Policy (2003), National Policy on Wetlands and the Conservation Strategies (2006), National Air Quality Management Policy (2000), National Climate Change Policy (2012), National Policy on Wildlife Conservation (1990), National Policy on Invasive Alien Species (2016), National Forestry Policy (1995), National Policy on Solid Waste Management (2007), National Waste Management Policy (2018), National Policy on Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Mangrove Ecosystems 2019, National Policy and Strategy for Cleaner Production  2005, National Policy on Biosafety (2011) and National Policy on Sustainable Consumption & Production (2019).

MP Pathirana said that former President Maithripala Sirisena soon before his leaving the office had signed a gazette to expand the Sinharaja forest by three times its present size, but the government had taken one year to publish it. “Subsequent, to this I saw a Facebook post by former President Sirisena that he signed 55 more such gazettes but they had not been published yet. When will those gazettes come out? Why is the government delaying them if the government is so concerned about the environment?”

Minister Amaraweera said that those gazettes would be printed in due course.