Furniture transport made easy

By Ashwin Hemmathagama Our Lobby Correspondent

Some of the rigid procedures imposed by Forest Regulations No. 1 of 2008, published in Gazette Extraordinary No. 1548/ 29 dated 9 May 2008 were relaxed recently by Parliament, allowing the transportation of furniture made out of a wide range of different species of timber, regardless of scarcity or extinction.

According to this amendment, only furniture made out of ebony, calamander, sandal wood, satin wood and nadun wood will require permits. Windows and doorframes as well as windows and doors made out of timber other than ebony, calamander, sandal wood, satin wood, and nadun wood will continued to be controlled with permits.

“The number of violations and offences related to timber has gone down from 3,298 in 2010 to 2,955 in 2011. If you quantify, the offences reported on furniture related activities are negligible, so we have decided to relax rules with regards to furniture,” said Minister of Environment Anura Priyadharshana Yapa, who was confident that relaxed laws would not increase the cutting down trees and clearing forests.

Almost 29 per cent of Sri Lanka is still covered by forests, out of which 22 per cent are categorised as thick jungles and the remainder is open forests. The Sinharaja Forest spreads over 11,187HA and Knuckles Forest ranges over 18,290HA in addition to 900,000HA of forestry made on private lands as an investment.