KUCHING, Feb 16 — More than RM6 million worth of logs have been seized in Sarawak since the start of the year as the state government seeks to stem the outflow of illegally felled timber.
The illegal logging business had been bleeding Malaysia’s largest state of billions of ringgit for the past three decades till Tan Sri Adenan Satem took over as chief minister.
“Our success is due to close cooperation extended by other relevant government agencies to the Forestry Department,” the state Forestry director Sapuan Ahmad told Malay Mail Online today.
Last year, more than RM41 million worth of logs were seized following a directive from Adenan.
Stunned by the large extent at which Sarawak’s rainforests — among the oldest in the world — was being logged, the man who replaced Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud stepped up efforts to stop the bleed, by providing Forestry officials with firearms and helicopters to boost air surveillance.
Adenan also warned timber companies their licences would be revoked if they were found to have violated logging laws.
However, no arrests have been made to date against those suspected of illegal logging, Sapuan said today.
He said that all seized logs have turned over to Harwood Timber Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of the state-owned Sarawak Timber Development Corporation (STIDC), for disposal.
Harwood Timber general manager Abdul Hadi Abdul Kadir said it got rid of most of the seized logs through a tender.
“We sold the logs through tenders which were opened to carefully selected sawmills,” he told Malay Mail Online, adding that sawmills with bad records would not be invited to participate in the tender exercise.
Abdul Hadi said the rest of the illegally felled logs were those found deep in the jungle and could not be transported out easily.
Those were sawn into smaller pieces that would be rendered useless to prevent others from carting them off for trade, he said.
