Muthuvel urges checks on logging operations

 WEST New Britain Governor Sasindran Muthuvel asked Parliament if logging operations in his province are monitored for their environmental impact.

He told Parliament that logging was highly prevalent in West New Britain but there was no effective monitoring in terms of damage to the environment, such as damage to coral reefs, as reported in the media last week.

“As a provincial government, we do not have the capacity in terms of really monitoring all those logging operations in very remote locations,” Muthuvel said.

He asked Environment and Conservation Minister John Pundari if there were any plans by his department to monitor damage to the environment caused by logging in his province and all other provinces.

Pundari agreed that there was a lot of environmental impact caused by logging in the country.

“The monitoring and compliance of the logging industry is in the hands of my department. I must honestly state that it has been minimal over the years,” he said.

“As of last year, we created a division in the department to take care of environmental compliance of the logging industry in the country.”