Timber firm denies breaching logging, market deals

A TIMBER company says claims it had breached its logging and marketing agreement (LMA) with landowner company Umboi Timber Investments in its operations on Umboi Island in Morobe are misleading.
A spokesman for Everwell said yesterday its timber licence had been renewed in September last year by the National Forest Authority (NFA).
“If we had breached the terms of the LMA, our licence would not have been renewed,” he said in a statement.
“We have been operating under the timber permit from UTI for the past seven years now without facing any accusations from the genuine landowners and have not had any problems with the NFA.”
He said that under the agreement with the landowners, royalties and levies from one block were not shared with landowners in any other blocks.
“The allegations made against the company were motivated by people who are not the genuine resource owners.
“The company has harvested all of the timber in blocks one and two and has moved onto block three of the project area.
 “Now that the operation has moved to block three, chairmanship of UTI has shifted to block three landowners,” the spokesman said.
 “The current chairman of UTI Sam Nalong said last month he has no problems with the company.”
A spokesman for the Maralei and Kabi communities on the island had alleged that the company had breached the LMA on log specifications, locations where the logs should be felled, had not paid some amounts of levy fees and premiums and not provided basic community services to these communities.