Transportation of rosewood logs from Upper West Region banned

The Upper West Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) has banned the transportation of rosewood logs from the region.

It has, consequently, mandated the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and other security agencies to seize any rosewood logs being transported from the region and arrest those behind the transportation.

Addressing an RCC meeting in Wa last Tuesday, the Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji Amin Amidu Sulemani, said the deadline given to companies to lift lying rosewood logs had long elapsed.

"The Regional Security Council has placed a ban on the movement of rosewood from the region since July 7, 2016," he told municipal and district chief executives, coordinating directors of the assemblies and other technical staff attending the meeting.

"I wish to caution officials of the Forestry Commission to cooperate with us in order to save our forests from total destruction," he said.

Valuable commodity

Rosewood has become a valuable commodity in high demand for export. In the Upper West Region, it is about the most quality aspect of the forest stock.

Under a directive from the Forestry Commission, logs that had already been felled could be transported, but the regional minister said "people can fell the trees and ask to transport them", hence the outright ban of rosewood transportation.

School infrastructure

Alhaji Sulemani also announced that three of the region's share of the Community Day Senior High Schools at Zini, Lambussie and Dorimon could be inaugurated in the coming weeks, as work on them was near completion.

He announced that seven other senior high schools at Jirapa, Piina, Funsi, Ullo, Daffiama, Hamile and Ko had been selected as beneficiaries of the Secondary Education Improvement Project, while a contract had been awarded for the construction of a senior high technical school at Fielmua in the Sissala West District.

He said the region had almost eliminated the schools-under-trees phenomenon through the construction of classroom blocks, courtesy the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), which had also supported school furniture, the construction of teachers' quarters, among others.

With the region set to benefit from a 41.38-km asphalt overlay to cover town roads in the Wa municipality, Tumu, Nadowli-Kaleo, Lawra and Jirapa, as well as ongoing works to improve the surfaces of some trunk roads that link the region to Burkina Faso and the Upper East Region, the minister said Upper West was getting a good share of national development.