The Ogun State Government may have begun to reap benefits accruing from the automation of its forest operations. There are indications that the development is translating into increased revenue for the authorities.
Commissioner for Forestry, Chief Kolawole Lawal, made the disclosure recently in Abeokuta, the state capital, while speaking with newsmen after a training programme organised by the Ministry for foresters, in the bid to to get them (the foresters) acquainted with the automation processes. The new process has been introduced for the state’s logging operations and activities in all the forest reserves across the state.
He said the automation system, which had been extended to all other forest reserves, became imperative having evaluated its efficacy in blocking leakages in its reserve in area J4 where the system had been test run, saying the result was satisfactory.
Kolawole said: “In just one week of implementation of the automated system in one of the reserves, the revenue generated from the area has rapidly increased as the process has cubed leakages, and it is time-saving and smooth to operate. That is the reason we decided to extend it and upgrade our operations across board.”
“We are now into a process which is devoid of foul play, this is a Ministry that had in recent past automated about two of its logging locations, J4 and J4 projects, but we still have other areas where our people still use Out Turn Volume (OTV), which is a manual way of logging.”
