Fiji Pine Trust is giving villages from the maritime areas a feel of business entrepreneurship through their forest produce.
According to the manager Lasarusa Turaga the pine scheme is one of their aims to allow these villages to do their business with their pine produce.
Kadavu had sent its second shipment of timber yesterday under the Ono Pine Scheme from the Nagara Village, which was stated to come under the Yavusa Tiliva development community with plans to continue this business on a weekly basis.
“In the islands they used to ask what would become of our pines, it’s been standing here for 13 to 14 years,” he said.
“We are thankful firstly to government, really appreciative to their approach given these trying times.
“We’ve gone into partnership with Fiji Pine Trust and other stakeholders just to provide something to them in return.”
Mr Turaga added the shipment was of 12 cubic metres of timber which would be sent to timber merchants.
The estimated cost for these timber was said to be about $7000. “This timber is from Kadavu — there has been an arrangement with the shipowner, they are paying him through timber also in order to get this operation rolling, he gets his share while the rest goes to the timber merchant.”
He said after tropical cyclones, as soon as the housing rehabilitation program was done by the government and they were allowed to go back and venture into the business in order to use their standing volume back in the plantations.
“Right now there is a huge demand for pine, I’m talking about Fiji Pine Trust perspective basically, it’s readily available and secondly we are taking up portable sawmills to them to utilise.
“It is a part of government’s development goal, one to provide livelihood and secondly to alleviate poverty and this is what we are doing to them right now.”
However there was shortage of indigenous species of timber as there was a decline in the volume of it in the country.
Mr Turaga said they were trying to improve on this area as there were mahogany and pine plantations being carried out.
“We are so glad that Gau has come on board also through Ministry of Forestry in collaboration with Fiji Pine Trust in seeing returns are returned to the landowners especially for their future generation as I had alluded to but it’s the same concept to Kadavu.”
This was Gau’s first shipment which was estimated to be about $10,000.
