WB warned not to stop money

WB warned not to stop money

BENGKULU: The North Bengkulu administration warned that illegal logging in the protected Kerinci Seblat National Park would reach alarming levels, if the World Bank stopped or decreased its financial aid for a forest conservation program.

"Locals living near the national park will come in to squat in the forest area and slash down big trees to be supplied to sawmills unless the government, with the help of World Bank money, takes necessary actions," the deputy regent of Bengkulu Utara, Inron Rosadi, cautioned here on Monday.

The World Bank is scheduled to wind up its financial assistance project for conservation of the national park, reportedly due to uncontrolled corruption, although at least one Bank official said it was simply the end of the project term.

Hidayatullah Sahid, chief of the local forestry office, said the local administration was seeking financial aid from the central government to continue the conservation program in the national park.

Some 20 percent of the 340,000-hectare national park has been occupied by locals for farmland. --Antara