Soe Htike Aung
The locals are not satisfying with the uninformed project which sets (100) acres of local land as natural forest development with the signboard, and the project is conducted by Forest Department with the plan of state government.
Although the locals want the signboard to describe as Law Kyay Ku Village’s community forest, the erected signboard didn’t mention it as the community own.
“We talked to them about the signboard since the beginning. We want this as Law Kyay Ku owns, the community forest. We talked to them, and they said they can do that. They also said they will erect the signboard together with the locals when they come and erect signboard. However, none of our locals know when they erected the signboard. We also didn’t know the date they erected. Besides, there is no name of our village, Law Kyay Ku, when we went and checked it.” said U Pa Ku, the villager of Law Kyay Ku.
Kantarawaddy Times interviewed to Deemawsoe Forest Department concerned with this issue, and the Head of Deemawsoe and Hpruso Forest Department U Swan Thet said, “It also became we didn’t negotiate and invite them. On that day, we had to erect it urgently, and it became like this. We are very sorry for that. We also went to the village on Sunday and apologize to them satisfactorily. We also commanded our staff to take it off.”
It says the locals are not satisfied with that although they sat meeting and discussed with Forest Department on May 17th.
Although the Forest Department brought the local asked signboard to that meeting, the locals are still not acceptable with it since the Forest Department didn’t prepare the forest handover letter for them.
“On previous day, we discussed we will erect the signboard together only if they bring the signboard and handover letter. If they don’t have handover letter, we will not accept. Now we could not accept it yet since they didn’t bring the handover letter.” said U Eh Htoo who lives in Daw Klaw Leh Ward, Law Kyay Ku Village.
It said the Forest Department will do the handover letter with (5) steps and define the forest as community forest as local requested with handover letter.