I REFER to your front-page story “Billion-ringgit robberies” (NST, Oct 27). Illegal logging is booming, as syndicates tighten their grip on this profitable industry that is ripping off millions of state and national revenue.
This scourge has been going on for years.
Lately, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission conducted Op Tukul in Sarawak and found that the state government had lost
more than RM45 million to
illegal loggers in the last four months.
Last Tuesday, 26 MACC enforcement officers raided a kongsi near the Selayu Forest in Johor and arrested 20 foreigners involved in illegal logging.
But does this mean that the state Forestry Department isn’t doing its job?
Illegal logging robs developing nations of revenue while promoting corruption and inflicting massive ecological destruction on water-catchment areas.
It takes a terrible toll on the environment, promotes deforestation, loss of biodiversity and causes carbon emissions at alarming rates.
Moreover, the flood of illegal timber makes it much harder for legitimate timber producers to make a living.
Illegal logging thrives because it is lucrative.
A new report by Interpol and the United Nations Environment Programme, “Green Carbon Black Trade”, estimates the economic value of illegal logging and
wood processing to range from US$30 billion (RM98 billion) to US$100 billion (RM327 billion) annually.
That constitutes 10 to 30 per cent of the global trade in wood products.
Illegal logging plagues the world’s poorest people, many of whom live in tropical timber-producing countries.
According to a 2011 study by World Bank, two-thirds of the world’s nations are losing at least half of their timber to illegal loggers.
The tactics used include falsifying logging permits and using bribery to obtain illegal permits, logging outside of timber concessions, hacking government websites to forge transportation permits, and laundering illegal timber by mixing it with legal timber supplies.
The good news, however, is
that improving enforcement is making things tougher for illegal loggers, and, in Johor and Sarawak, senior police officers with the rank of assistant commissioner were arrested and 30 bank accounts amounting to RM18 million belonging to 10 companies were frozen.
MACC, police and state Forestry Departments must enforce tough laws to throw illegal loggers into prison and cancel their licences.
C. Sathasivam Sitheravellu, Seremban, Negri Sembilan