By Ragan M. Conteh
The Executive Director of the National Protected Area Authority (NPAA), Joseph Rato Musa, has informed Members of parliamentary sub-committee on the Environment that guards belonging to the Authority, securing the Outamba Kilimi National Park, are under sustained attacks from Guinean armed officers.
The NPAA Executive Director reported that the Park, which is supposed to be a protected zone, had over the years witnessed rampant and illegal farming and logging of big trees.
The Authority, he told MPs, was facing a lot of challenges of maintaining committed security guards at the Outamba Park, noting that most times the park was deserted by the guards
The NPAA boss noted that, as a first step measure, they were constructing a Forest Guard House that would keep security Guards at the park to effectively do their work.
He continued that they were proposing to construct a perimeter fence in the Western Area Peninsulas forest to prevent encroachers and other land grabbers including timber loggers from accessing the forest.
The NPAA, according to him, had registered 15 protected areas across the country and that seven of those fifteen were wetlands.
The Authority has only 29 forest Guards to protect over 110,000 hectares.
Mr Musa said the lack of funding for the activities of the NPAA had increasingly challenged their work. The NPAA, he told MPs, was yet to receive their first quarter allocation. He called on the Committee on Environment to help protect the reserves against timber logging.
The Chairman of the Committee on Environment, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, stated that the concerns of NPAA were very serious and ordered the Clerk of the Committee to summon the NPAA Board, the Ministry of Agriculture, and other actors to face the House on Tuesday 3rd March 2020 for further deliberations.