“Put your house in order” – Vickram Bharrat to Kwakwani logging associations

Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat on Tuesday urged logging associations of Kwakwani, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), during a ministerial outreach, to fix their internal issues and work in unity.
“I want to urge the associations: put your house in order, we don’t want complaints of favouritism with one person getting more tags than the other one; a lot of the associations have fighting and we have some back-biting; we have to start cooperating and we have to start working together,” Minister Bharrat implored.
Bharrat said the Government was cognisant that besides agriculture, logging was the community’s major economic activity and he was, therefore, committed to working in partnership with the associations to better the sector, but the associations must first work with themselves. “We are committed to working with the associations, but the associations have to be committed to fixing their internal issues,” he noted.

In an effort to cushion the high cost of living and as a means of creating employment, loggers were implored to divert their attention to value-added products and “stop selling raw materials”. The Natural Resources Minister encouraged loggers to construct portable sawmills, explaining that while employment would be created for residents of the community, they the loggers would earn more from selling lumber or dressed materials than selling plain logs.
Also present at the ministerial outreach were Local Government and Regional Development Minister Nigel Dharmlall; Chief Education Officer, Dr Marcel Hudson; Regional Executive Officer Dwight John and technical staff of the various Ministries.