BY MAVIS N PODOKOLO
THE Solomon Islands logging industry provides around 10,000 jobs.
This is according to Dr Nishikawa Tatsuji, Chief Advisor of JICA’s Sustainable Forest Resources Management SFRM project in Solomon Islands.
“The logging industry provides around 10,000 jobs, which represent 20 percent of total employment,” Tatsuji says.
He said the population growth facing Solomon Islands has resulted in a large surplus workforce but which as 10 thousand jobs has not been able to fully participate in the logging industry.
“The current status of the demographics and workforce of communities in Solomon Islands communities is that births are increasing in all communities and the proportion of youth and infant in the communities is also increasing.
“It is a challenge in all community for adolescents to get jobs and cash income within the communities. On the other hand, if communities sell their tree to logging company, the following negative effects may occur; the forest resources, which is the main property of the community will be lost at once, the forest will be recovered to take more than 20 years, the youth will have no hope of living in the community and when natural disasters occur, the damage will be enormous,” Tatsuji said.
He echoed the above statement during the event of the second Press tour for local Journalists in the country.
