Supply of raw materials to wood workers in Ghana continues to be a major challenge confronting wood workers and stakeholders in the local wood work industry in the country.
A situation that led to the intitutionalisation of the mandatory sale of 20% of sawn lumber by Sawn Millers to the local market, as stipulated in the 1994 Forestry and Wildlife Policy in Ghana. Available statistics indicate that there is more than 430,000 metric tonnes supply gap of timber raw materials in Ghana to the detriment of the local wood work industry who are represented by artisans whose main raw material is wood.
This status quo is resulting in the consistent downsizing of local commercial wood working firms and with it, employment in the local wood work sector.
This situation is said to account for the loss of over 9,000 jobs between January and October 2011 as indicated by the Wood Workers Association of Ghana (WWAG). Furthermore, the situation has led to a resort to illegal sources of obtaining raw materials by a vast majority of local wood workers to the detriment of our forest and wildlife.
As cited in the Voluntary Partnership Agreement?s ?Timber Industry Restructuring Group Final Report? published in June 2008, illegal chainsaw logging and trade in illegal timber has attained unprecedented levels since the onset of the Forest Development Master Plan of 1995 which, among others things, sought to curb the practice illegal lumbering and chainsaw operations in Ghana.
It is currently estimated that 50% or 1.5 million cubic tonnes of annual harvested timber, which is estimated at 3 million m3, is from illegal sources compared to the prescribed annual allowable cut of 2 million m3. The high volume of illegal timber extracted from the forests poses a major challenge to the sustainability of Ghana?s forest resources exploitation.
In view of the huge revenue obtained from the export of timber, domestic raw material needs of wood workers and wood processing companies are neglected in favour of higher value export markets. This situation is in direct contradiction of the dictates of the 1994 Forest and Wildlife policy which stipulates that 20% of wood products from sawn mills should be sold on the domestic market.
Furthermore, the policy framework for procurement and quality control of timber products on the domestic market is fragile and has not been effective. Although section 22 of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663), requires that only certified sawn lumber from recognized sawmills are allowed for use in the projects of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the country, there is no mechanism to ensure that this is actually the case.
There is also ample evidence to the effect that state institutions are importing wood products such as furniture from abroad, which could easily have been supplied by local wood industry if only they had adequate access to raw materials.
Additionally, the Forest and Wildlife Policy of 1994 makes explicit provisions for supplying quality and adequate industrial timber to the domestic market besides the Timber Resource Management Act 1998 (Act 547) and LI 1649, which further give legal backing to the policy aspiration by authorizing the minister responsible for forestry to, from time to time, review the situation and give directives for the supply of industrial timber to the domestic market.
At the moment, the prevailing directives are that some sawmills be given special permits to process timber solely for the domestic market and for Trades Union Congress holders to supply 20% of their production to the domestic market.
What is conspicuously missing are processes to ensure that this directive is followed. According to the Wood Workers Association of Ghana, chainsaw operators supply about 84% of lumber available to the domestic market.
To this end, perhaps the greatest impact of a full VPA regime will be the volume of timber that can possibly be available to lumber traders to trade on the domestic market.
This is because, legal standards require that timber extraction be within official annual allowable cut limits and that no illegal logging or milling be permitted beyond the stipulated limits.
This means that chainsaw operations, which supply about 84% of lumber, traded on the domestic market will be cracked down and that the maximum allowable cut may be as low as 780,000 m 3 and as high as 2 million m 3. When this happens, the local wood work industry in Ghana will be confronted with a myriad of problems that will include the following:
? Loss of employment and livelihood,
? Shortage of some species of lumber on the domestic market and
? Delays in receiving supplies (thus, locking up the capital of traders).
? High start-up capital (since sawmills mostly require full payment before consignments are delivered)
? High prices of sawmill lumber
? Perpetration of chainsaw activities
? Extortion of moneys from lumber traders by law enforcement agencies
It is against this background that the Ashanti Regional branch of the Wood workers Association of Ghana is embarking on an advocacy action for the enforcement of the 1994 Forestry and Wildlife Policy and a guaranteed quota of raw materials which the association believes would enhance their access to raw material (wood on the local market) for their operations and boost their business viability.
Source: Elorm Ntumi
