Buchanan – The National Union of Community Forestry Development Committees (NUCFDC) on Saturday, June 22, concluded a five-day capacity building training for Community Forestry Development Committee members of several counties.
Report by Elton W. Tiah, Contributor
The capacity building training was conducted under the Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA) and the European Union (EU)-FLEGT Program.
Andrew Zelemen, National Facilitator of NUCFDC, told FrontPageAfrica that they have trained over 30 CFDCs in forest monitoring and social agreement monitoring.
He added that the capacity building training was aimed at building the knowledge of the CFDCs who are responsible to manage the resources from the forest most especially where logging activities are taking place.
He continued, “The forest has lots of benefits, one of which is the cubic meter fees. We trained the CFDCs how the cubic meter is being calculated on the logs before the fees are calculated”.
Zelemen furthered that the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has set up many new forest management regulations which are very good for the citizens and the company’s operations.
“The operations of companies in the forest sometimes have direct negative impacts on the lives of the people in the concession areas,” he said.
“The FDA has set up a code of forest harvest practices that each of the companies need to abide by to stop those harmful things that will affect the lives of the people.”
Josiah Johnson, a participant of the training from RiverCess County, said it served as an “eye-opener” for him.
“During the training, I learned a lot of things which were very important to me most especially the calculation of cubit meter that we learned”, Johnson Said.
Annie Jehwlu, another participant, added: “I want to say thank you to NUCFDC and FAO for the sponsorship because I have learned l how to monitor my forest and social agreement. It is my hope that they conduct more training for us in the nearby future.”