The Hon. Pathmanathan Sathiyalingam

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, I support the Adjournment Motion. Similar to this Gazette, in 2014 the then Government used Forest Department powers to declare people’s lands as forest. Some of those tracts are only now being released. Forest officers should focus on their daily duties, not repeatedly gazetting and degazetting.

¶ 02 Many of our people are abroad and cannot return now. Lands with long-held private claims are still marked as forest. I hear more forest-related Gazettes are being prepared. Please avoid further confusion: give sufficient time; scrutinize whether the lands are truly forest; release those wrongly taken; and only then proceed. Tanks, long-cultivated plots with clear boundaries, even homesteads, have been marked as forest, though they contain mango, jack and coconut trees—species not typical of natural forests. Restore lived-in lands to the people, and if new forest Gazettes are contemplated, first ensure they are not people’s lands.