QUARRY ACTIVITIES IN PUGU FOREST WHOM TO BLAME?

Quarry activity is still operating in Pugu forest by local community though the district council announces them to vacate the place.
The Pugu Forest which is located few kilometers from Kisarawe town center is containing diverse species of plants. Local communities conducting quarry activities within the forest using hand tools. This community depends on this activity to obtain their daily income by selling the gravel and other materials extracted from this area.

Due to severe destruction of this forest which results to loss of biodiversity and soil erosion district country announced local community who are doing quarry activity within forest to vacate and move to the new area which is allocated away from this forest. The people are willing to shift to proposed area but them claiming that there is poor infrastructure such as road and the land is not cleared to expose the rock layer because they can’t remove the topsoil layer by using hand tools.

The road contractors and other building companies are the one who starts to do quarry activities in this forest where the use modern technology such as digging machine like excavator, to process gravel and other material for road construction . Due to use of this technology they managed to extract large quantity of materials for short time with great destruction to land and this is what happened to Pugu forest. After the completing the road construction the company abandon the place without covering the area(land restoration) and here is where local community come in and proceed with quarry activity using their hands tool to acquire their daily income. due to severe destruction resulted from this activities government announce people to vacate this area but fail to prepare good working environment in new proposed mining area .So whom to blame district governance or local community?

heri jackson
herij26@gmail.com