People of East Sepik Province recently welcomed the opening of the PNG Forest Authority (PNGFA) office in Wewak.
Under PNGFA’s new Corporate Plan 2021-2030, new provincial offices have been opened in Manus, Vanimo and Wewak. The opening was officiated by Managing Director of the National Forest Services (NFS) John Mosoro and Member for Wewak, Kevin Isifu.
The building is named in recognition of Wewak district’s first Forester, Andrew Yawiap.
“We’ve started building an office for Kimbe and are now looking as New Ireland province,” said Mosoro.
The Managing Director stated that all Forestry office building wills be renovated including staff houses.
“All the offices will be changed, all the forestry officers will have new homes to stay in. We will have land to build all the houses for Forestry officers throughout the country,” said Mosoro.
He said, “PNGFA’s tasks in the country include working on the National Forest Plan to know how much resources we have, and East Sepik is in our National Forest Plan.”
The East Sepik Provincial Forest Plan will revive the Provincial Forest Management Committee (PFMC) and the Provincial Administrator will be the committee chair to run the plan in the province.
Mosoro said, “We have to revive ESP as it has a lot of reosurces. We will have the East Sepik Provincial Forest Plan for the next five years. Under this plan, we will divide the resources into different areas, that is Natural forest into logging to downstream processing and reforesting all the grasslands.”
Richard Kali has been appointed to coordinate reforestation and afforestation plantation programs in ESP. The office for reforestation and afforestation will be located at Wosera Gawi. Kali will work closely with landowners to plant 200,000 tree species in the province.
Mosoro said with the opening of the new building, a new position for an officer specializing in carbon trading would be created.
The officer will talk to landowners to start carbon trading. The aim is to have ESP be the first province to model and run carbon trading and natural forest and reforesting grassland for carbon trading in the future. He emphasized that these are PNGFA’s provincial forest plans.
Isifu said Wewak district received over K5 million for the last five years for Log Export Development Levies. With the fund, they were able to complete important programs inside the forest impact areas.