Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The Charcoal seller saga...

Despite having informed, by calling the Nairobi Forestry office this morning, and talking to somebody who gave me his name as 'Yusuf', who promised to mobilize the local (Mombasa), forestry people, nothing seems to have been done about this continued insolence. He has also taken my phone contacts promising to get in touch, but, it's now over 3 hours since I talked with him, but, have got no feedback....., yet.

I would have take a picture of the canter and what it was carrying, but, I don't have my camera with me just now, unfortunately.

The neighbourhood charcoal seller has just received the latest consignment of a Canter full of sacks of charcoal and this time it arrived in broad daylight on a weekday! In the past, it's done so in the middle of the night usually on weekends.

In fact, I'd gone to see Mr. Mwamela
, our local District Forestry Officer who has recently taken up his post, replacing Mr. Mwai, on Friday, last week, but he didn't give me his contact number nor did he sound very enthusiastic about protecting our dwindling forests.

When, I told him that the charcoal seller had recently finished his supply and he would soon be rec'ving more, he told me that he would get in touch with his predecessor, Mr. Mwai, and find out what his investigations had revealed. Also, that this week he would be unavailable as he would be attending a workshop the whole week!

Now, my question to everybody concerned is - with such 'officers', it is any wonder that our forest cover is getting destroyed? Btw, the Canter's registration number was/is - KAU 865J and it arrived here at 10.00 am, 6th Nov 2007, if anybody is interested and anything can be done about following this up. Of course, the guy will have no sign or trace of charcoal in the Canter by now, but, if the relevant people had arrived here on time, they would have caught and been able to question both the carrier and the seller. Now, the seller might or will pass the buck to the carrier!

Hoping, that this will be investigated and stopped.....

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