By GIDEON NYENDWA
GOVERNMENT has written to cooperating partners to help them with resources that will enable a Strategic Impact Environmental Assessment to be initiated on the degazetted Forest Reserve Number 27, minister of Lands and Natural Resources Elijah Muchima has said. Mr. Muchima said that there was need to do a Strategic Impact Environmental assessment on Forest Number 27 to determine how much the recharge had been affected, whether it could be salvaged or it could be sustained or whether it could interphase and stay with settlers there. “We have to know what the conditions are,” he said. He said the ministry had written to cooperating partners who had shown willingness but they had not indicated to what extent they were going to go. Mr. Muchima said the Strategic Impact Environmental Assessment had not yet started because it was very expensive and that was the reason why it had not taken off. “We are still waiting for resources,” he said. He said the government does not need to hurry this process because they do not want to make a decision that would disadvantage other people. Government had halted construction at the contentious Forest Reserve 27 in Lusaka on September 15, 2021 to pave way for an extensive audit on how the plots in question were acquired. Mr Muchima said it was astonishing to note how much of the forest reserve has so far been taken up and the damage it has caused on the water recharge area. In 2009, forest reserve 27 had 1, 759 hectares of which the area has had three excisions, leaving only 716 hectares of the water recharge land
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