By Express News Service
DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand forest department has removed 5,000 forest guards in ongoing forest fire season, as part of a decision which was taken following budget constraints, officials said. The move is expected to adversely affect the fire fighting operations in the ongoing fire season.
Nitish Mani Tripathi, divisional forest officer, Dehradun, explaining the reasons behind the decision said, “The forest guards were hired using the budget under CAMPA funds (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) for financial year 2021-22 seven months ago. The budget has not been allocated for next year that is why the jobs are dissolved now.”
The forest guards used to get paid Rs 8,000 per month whose job entailed ground patrolling of the forests of the hill state and apprising about the ground situation to the authorities. With so many forest guards gone in one go, the threat of forest fires, wildlife crimes lurks. Fire season in he hill state starts on February 15 and goes on till the monsoon arrives.
A senior official on the condition of anonymity said, “These human resources are valuable asset and must be retained as they are the hours on ground. There is a threat of them turning against the very department and indulging in wildlife crimes as they know the forest and the department inside out.” A total of 107 incidents of forest fires have been reported this year destroying 139.86 hectares of forest land. In 2021, 2,813 forest fire incidents occurred destroying 3943.88 hectares of forest land while in year 2020 only 135 such incident were reported with damages to 172.69 hectares of forest land.
