GFC withdrawing case against TPL

Jul 16, 2008 News

The Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) will be withdrawing its case against Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL) on Friday when the matter is expected to be heard in the Court of Appeal.

This will make way for the execution of an earlier order granted by Chief Justice Ian Chang.
The CJ had ruled on June 30 last, that the GFC withdraw its closure notice directed to TPL.

As a consequence, GFC filed an appeal along with a stay of the execution of the Chief Justice’s order.
Yesterday, when the case was called in the Court of Appeal, it was adjourned until Friday.

This came on the heels of a decision by TPL to close its forestry operations at Manaka, and sawmilling operations on Lombard Street, sending more than 300 workers home, with the majority of those being daily-paid employees. Monthly staff has since been sent on annual leave.

Speaking with Kaieteur News yesterday, Marketing Manager of TPL, Kadirullah, said that the company has already completed its inventory but is awaiting officers from the GFC to verify.

“We went to them on Friday and they are supposed to do the verification. They were supposed to go in yesterday (Monday) and they said today (yesterday).

(Yesterday) when we contact them they say everybody is at a meeting. So we do not know when they will be going to verify,” Kadirullah told Kaieteur News.

On April 23 last, the GFC issued a closure order on a State Forest Concession leased to TPL for verified and reported admitted breaches of procedures.

Following the notice of closure, TPL applied to the court for an order of mandamus.
An order of mandamus is a writ given by the court for any public official body to carry out some specific duty.

In response to this application, the GFC argued that an order mandamus was not one that could be granted.
This promoted the company to request time to amend their application despite strenuous objections from the GFC. After three adjournments, the court made an order nisi absolute.

TPL moved to the court in April to stop the Forestry Commission from enforcing a stop order on its Timber Sales Agreement.

The company went to the court to disallow the commission from collecting an $80M fine for reported breaches in harvesting regulations.

Following the reported discovery of breaches by the company, Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, had announced that an audit revealed that the company was guilty of harvesting blocks for which no fully percentage of inventory information had been submitted to, or approved by the Forestry Commission.

He said that despite several meetings with the company, no one denied to the commission that there were no breaches.

During a press conference, Persaud stated that the company was also in breach of guidelines by harvesting blocks which were not stated in its Annual Operations Plan for 2007.

The Minister said that despite efforts by the commission to encourage sustainable forest management practices, TPL had committed ‘blatant’ breaches and when advised, moved to take legal actions.

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GFC withdrawing case against TPL

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GFC withdrawing case against TPL

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