BY SAMIE WAIKORI

Auki

THE Makira Ulawa Provincial Government is working towards the interest of establishing growing the province’s production sector.

Premier Stanley Siapu said his government has set up a taskforce to work closely with landowners and land trustees to carry out scoping and prefeasibility on areas to be pursued under the interest.

He said the targeted areas include agriculture (which looks at livestock and coconut rehabilitation), forestry, fisheries and tourism and culture.

“The focus is on former coconut plantations which are registered and entrusted to some landowners, communities and the Commissioner of Lands.

“MPUG sees the opportunity and potential in reviving and rehabilitating these old coconut plantations for replanting.

“The rationale is coconut industry is decreasing in productivity due to aging and decline in coconut trees.

“And there has never been any major new planting or replanting of coconuts in old, new and current coconut plantations,” Mr Siapu said.

He added that under the initiative his government is also working on reviving the cattle industry.

“We will also explore the possibility of tethering to ensure families participate as well in the cattle industry with one or two heads of cattle tethered,” Siapu said.

He said his government will also explore the idea of offering land for a research station or demonstration farm, as there is no national research station or demonstration farm in place in the country.

Adding that his government will work with landowners to revive the onion farm at Hauratarata, Marou Bay in West Makira.

He said another area they will pursue is the idea of establishing tourist resorts in some of the potential areas within the province.

“The potential to promote tourism in our province lies in traditional, culture and custom and wild life as well as potential avenues yet to be tapped,” he said.

BY SAMIE WAIKORI

Auki

MALATA provincial police has proposed a two-day awareness talk to communities in ward 24 in West Are’are, Malaita province.

Malaita Provincial Police Commander (PPC), Mr Timothy Apaesi told this paper yesterday that the talk is set for mid next month.

He said the awareness talk will be on the Crime Prevention Strategy (CRS) and Community Policing (CP) to communities of Pipisu and surroundings.

Mr Apaesi said the talk will cover important areas under the CRS and CP that help people to understand their responsibilities in keeping law and order in their communities.

He said the talk will also enlighten the communities on how they should work together with police to tackle anti-social behaviours in the communities.

Apaesi said his office proposed the talk upon a request made by communities for police to carry out awareness talks in their areas.

He said his office has drawn up a similar programme for the province this year, and will soon implement it.

In response to a number of calls for effective policing in the province, Apaesi said resource is the main problem police in Malaita is facing.

He said in the province there are four police stations; Malu’u, Atori and Maka including Auki and Atoifi police post in East Kwaio.

“We have staff looking after them where they’ve been responsible for various parts in the province.

“Thus, by looking at infrastructure, accessibility of road only at certain parts of the province.

“So the appropriate mean of transport we can reach almost everywhere is by sea transport.”

He explained fuel is also often a problem which pops up regularly since they depend on funds for it.

By Gary Hatigeva

ON the eve of securing their trimmed budget, the Ministry of Forest and Research is looking strongly to reduce the volumes of logs to be exported this year.

This however raised concerns and questions from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) who are worried that the government’s budget, which projected something different and indicated heavy reliance on the export with a projection of around 2.4 million cubic metres for 2018, could create major draw backs.

The Committee questioned the status of both the ministry and the budget unit as there seems to be a mismatch in their projections.

When responding to the concerns and questions, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Forest and Research, Dr Vaeno Vigulu admitted that there have not been formal discussions between his team and the unit.

But Mr Vigulu explained that based on another meeting, which received representatives from the finance ministry within relevant units, discussions were held and the issue of volume reduction was raised.

“We actually discussed about slowing down on logging activities in the re-entry or secondary forests.

“At the moment we are exporting logs that are roughly around 2.79 cubic metres per log which are quite small and that means we are applying more pressure on our remaining virgin forests but then we are harvesting more on our re-entry.

“For your information, about 85 to 87 percent of the felling licences active now, are actually operating on secondary forests.

“And so if we are to continue exporting 2.6 million cubic metres of logs we are actually going to open up our forest and harvesting smaller logs than what we export last year,” Vigulu said.

He said last year and 2016 the 2.6 million cubic exports highlighted represented harvesting on around 80 hectares and Vigulu said that was based on opening up secondary forests.

He added that the continuation of undersized harvesting will force the country to wait longer for those forests to actually produce commercial logs or higher volumes to be exported.

“We have had a consultation with SFA last week and told them straight that we have to cut down on our volume of exports because we are actually six times unsustainably harvesting our forest,” the PS further explained.

It is understood that the sustainable harvesting of forest is supposedly between 400,000 to 500,000 cubic metres per annum for Solomon Islands.

Vigulu adds, “Therefore, that by continuing on exporting 2.6 million cubic metre per year will really open up our forests and will have some negative impact to the composition of species and the species abandons of our forest.

“That really needs to be considered and the government needs to come up with an alternative to fill up the gap if we are cutting those trees.

“But if the market can go lower to accept 15 cm diameter small end, that would be good, but we are opening or exposing smaller sized logs and if we need to go ahead with reducing the exports, the government needs to look into to fill up the gaps.”