Torghar Jirga asks govt to withdraw ‘protected’ status for forests

MANSEHRA: A jirga, attended by elders and tribesmen of major clans of Torghar district, have demanded the government to withdraw the ‘protected forests’ status for the local jungles.

“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, which had changed our tribal area status to a settled district in 2011, now wants to deprive us of our centuries-old forests by declaring them “protected”,” Maulana Shah Zain told the participants of a jirga held in Oghi on Monday.

The Maulana said that the jirga warned the government to reverse its order of declaring their forests as protected ones. “We want the government to declare these forests as ‘Guzara forests’ so that local tribesmen, who have been the owners of these jungles since centuries, could utilise them in times of need,” he said.

On the occasion, one Anwar Saeed said that the government had become the rightful owner of 40 percent share in land and trees after declaring these forests as “protected”, which they said was unacceptable to them at any cost.

“If the government doesn’t withdraw its notification of “protected forests”, we will launch an agitation and will also move the Supreme Court,” said Saeed. Mufti Nizamullah said that before the status of a settled district, those forests were community’s property and owned by all the four major tribes of the area.