Husam, who was a former state Economic Planning, Finance and Welfare Committee chairman, said the Kelantan Forestry Department must act early because they had officers who were assigned to ensure that its forests would not be encroached.

“They have their own foresters who are stationed in the forest. If people have stolen up to 20,000 acres, these officers should be aware of it much earlier than that.

“If secret passage was the excuse they have given, no matter how secret the passage is, someone would have noticed if the areas they cleared were 5,000 or 20,000 acres,” he told a press conference here today.

Previously, the department’s director Zahari Ibrahim was reported as saying more than 400 hectares (988.42 acres) of Ulu Galas and Batu Papan Forest Reserves in Gua Musang had been illegally exploited by syndicates using the Sultan of Kelantan and his royal families’ names to trick people into buying the land which they claimed to be turned to rubber and oil palm plantations, as well as banana farms.

Husam, who was also a former PAS vice-president, claimed that logging activities in Kelantan were not the normal logging activities where trees that were still relatively young and did not meet the right specifications were also cut.

“What happens in Kelantan is a total cutting down of trees solely for commercial purposes. In fact, it is among the most rampant in Peninsular Malaysia now,” he said.

– BERNAMA