AUTHORITIES FACILITATE LAND GRAB IN WANDAMA-DEMALIYA STATE FOREST RESERVE

Land grab in the proposed Wandama-Demaliya State Forest Reserve has been gathering momentum and much has been talked and written about it.

- Nayanajeewa Bandara

Continual representations of environmental organizations to the relevant authorities in this regard and their requests to carry out a formal audit of land illegally occupied by the racketeers have fallen on deaf ears.

Meanwhile the Department of Forest Conservation (DFC) had instituted legal action against a private sector company that had seized 500 acres of the proposed forest reserve by political favour. However the company occupying the land area had been ejected due to a court order.

However, the senior officials of the DFC with the approval of the Commissioner General of Land had surreptitiously alienated that land to the respondent company itself.

Environmental and the Civil Society organizations have underscored that this action amounted to contempt of court and created a bad precedent to the department.

They reiterated that it is the duty of the present government as promised to look into this land grab. The land grabbing activity has been going on unchecked in Wandama-Demaliya Forest Reserve and in the Monaragala district under the pretext of development. They pointed out that land alienation in the forest reserves had continued thanks to political favour. Senior government officials and the DFC are involved in the land grab at the instigation of politicians.

Illegal occupation of land in Wandama-Demaliya Forest Reserve, which includes the proposed elephant management area in Buttala Division in the Monaragala District, had been going on unchecked. It escalated after 1998. Two leading private companies with the support of prominent politicians of the government in power seized vast areas of the forest reserve.

The government alienated land to a multinational company under the pretext of Banana cultivation and the other to a Sri Lankan company for the cultivation of mangoes. Investigations revealed that several senior officials of the DFC were involved in this racket.