KPF Can Still Produce Teak Logs Though Banned In Three Pagoda Pass

 

Independent Mon News Agency

November 23, 2004

 

Local military authorities have banned the production of teak logs in the Three Pagoda Pass logging zone and are cleaning up illegal logging business in the area, according to logging businessmen in the area.

 

The military authorities has started banning the export of teak to Thailand since the end of October, and the No. 44 Brigade military operation has tried to clean out illegal logging in the Kyorn Chaung logging zone, northwest of Three Pagoda Pass, where teak was grown by a British colonel.

 

“The brigade soldiers lunched a military operation in the logging zone, ordered illegal logging businessmen not to produce logs or cut down logs and brigade soldiers are also registering teak plans,” said Min Thit Swe, a reporter.

 

“According to what logging businessmen told me, there are no illegal logging workers in the zone and they stopped their jobs after being so ordered. There's just U Maung Hlaing's workers who joined with Daw Saw Khin, the woman who registered her company with the Karen State Peace and Development Council,” he explained.

 

“Normally logging businessmen do not dare log teak. Most people joined Karen cease-fire groups and these groups do it,” said Nai Win, a Furniture Association member in Three Pagoda town.

 

“At the moment we have difficulty getting logs for our factory because of the impact of the ban. But we have to wait and see during the summer,” Nai Win added.

 

“I heard about the barred exporting, but I don’t know if we can log or not. But at the moment my nephew has been working for teak logs,” Major Lay War of the Three Pagoda Pass-based KPF, a Karen cease-fire group, said.

 

“The KPF can work with teakwood and export it to Thailand by their own means, but Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) groups that did a lot of teak logging in previous years have stopped their factories,” Min Thit Swe reported.

 

With the ban on the flow of teakwood, some furniture made with teak is carried inside Burma instead of being exported to Thailand, according to logging businessmen.

 

Although the government barred logging companies in the Three Pagoda Pass area, more than 30,000 tons of logs a year are produced for export to Thailand and sold in the area. That amount of logs is also imported inside Burma in a year.

 

Most logging business is run illegally and both the KPF and DKBA work with teak to export to Thailand by making ready for use products. The teak price was the highest, about 23,000 baht a ton in Three Pagoda Pass. Most teakwood businessmen tried to export it to Thailand to get a higher price.
 
In southern Burma, Three Pagoda Pass was the main place where teakwood was exported to Thailand.Because most business was run illegally, the military government forced furniture factory owners to register their factories as legal in September..

 

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