NAKURU, Kenya, Jul 28 – Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Presidential candidate Raila Odinga has disclosed that President Uhuru Kenyatta has agreed to lift the ban on logging in public and community forests as it is hurting local investors.
Odinga announced on Thursday during the Azimio campaign tour in Elburgon in Nakuru County that his intervention on the matter had yielded fruits and the Head of State had lifted the ban.
“I am declaring on behalf of the state that the government has issued the license for residents to enter into forests,” Odinga said.
The government imposed a moratorium on logging in 2019 to allow the harvesting of mature trees.
The former Prime Minister, however, decried that the ban had rendered many Kenyans jobless.
“I told the President that people of Elburgon are suffering and I requested him to lift the ban because its impact was hurting many and destroying livelihoods,” he said.
The government issued the moratorium so as to allow reassessment of the forest cover in the country, in the wake of the widespread destruction of forest cover that has led to an acute water crisis.
It followed a task force recommendation meant to counter years of deforestation that had drastically reduced the country’s forest cover.
After the ban, Kenya’s forest cover increased by six thousand hectares in 2020 according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
The agency indicated that the forest cover had expanded to 147,600 hectares from 141,600 recorded in 2018.
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