Logging contributes to constant flooding: Official

LOGGING is becoming a concern for locals as constant flooding and damage to bridges are raising questions in Namatanai, New Ireland.
Matalai local level government disaster and emergency coordinator Daniel Tuagon said logging in their area had become a major concern and it was a contributing factor to widespread flooding and damage.
“We’ve never experienced such flooding in the past with bridge-damage. Logging up the stream is the cause of it,” he said.
Tuagon said customary landowners needed to consider the impact of logging before they allowed logging companies in.
He said landowners should be careful because they only provided short-term benefits.
“These companies are taking your resources and giving you peanuts,” he said.
Several landowners have also expressed concern about the company cutting down trees and asked who had allowed them onto their land and who owned the company?
The authorities in New Ireland should speak publicly so that locals became aware, Tuagon said.
He said locals expressed concern at the unsustainable ways logging companies were plundering their rainforests.
They thanked the New Ireland government for building a temporary bridge along the Dick Lanzarote Highway, four days after floods washed away the access bridge near Uiam River at Poronbus village in Matalai LLG.