Kerala - Palakkad   

Close sandalwood oil units: committee

By Our Staff Reporter

PALAKKAD, MARCH 5. The Central Empowered Committee (CEC) constituted by the Supreme Court has called for the cancellation of all licences to sandalwood oil units.

A report submitted by the member-secretary of the CEC, M.K. Jiwrajka, on February 24 to the apex court recommended that the court's order of October 30, 2002 directing unlicensed saw mills, veneer and plywood factories in the country to be closed, may be extended to sandalwood oil factories.

The committee wanted the factories to be run only by the government.

It said "the sandalwood factories extracting oil even when sealed are able to recommence their operations illegally in connivance with the officials with ease. It is, therefore, imperative that all sandalwood factories whose licences have been granted under various Acts such as Factories and Boilers Act, Panchayat Act etc., are deemed to have been simultaneously cancelled."

The electricity connection of such units should be disconnected and the entire machinery dismantled.

It wanted the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests to review its policy about "permitting export of sandalwood chips and oil with reference to actual oil content in the sandalwood and adverse effect of export if any for the protection of sandalwood."

Political patronage

The committee said "the sandalwood oil factories located in Kerala survive through political patronage and continued to operate even though none of the 24 units had NOC (no-objection certificate) issued by the Forest Department. Frequently illegal sandalwood was seized from them but units were not closed down contrary to the Government's instructions."

It said that "the senior functionaries of the State Government remained a mute spectator and did not come forward in support of the officials whenever they had made serious attempts to fight the sandalwood mafia."

The "sandalwood available from official sources is too meagre to meet the requirements of the sandalwood factories. There are 24 sandalwood factories out of which only nine purchased sandalwood from auction conducted by the Forest Department during the last five years. The quantity purchased by all the units from the auction during the last five years was inadequate even for meeting the one year's requirement of just one unit working at full capacity."

The committee said that "they use illegal sandalwood in the garb of imported sandalwood, use of sapwood, showing a very high percentage yield of sandalwood oil etc."

It recommended the immediate closing down of sandalwood oil factories in non-sandalwood producing States and Union territories.

The States, which either do not produce any sandalwood or have nominal sandalwood production, were the ones which had a large number of sandal oil units. Goa had seven factories, Pondicherry — four, Andhra Pradesh — 11 and Kerala — 24.

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Close sandalwood oil units: committee

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