Kathmandu, June 11: Discussions on the Appropriation Bill-2057 B.S. began at the meeting of the House of Representatives today.

Taking part in the discussion on the appropriation head pertaining to the Ministries of Forest and Soil Conservation, and Population and Environment, Vidya Devi Bhandari of CPN-UML said the new forest management policy relating to community forest has led to a big crisis among the consumers, and making forest block will encourage wood smuggling. Attention has not been given to protection of rural environment and that the convention passed by the Cairo conference should be implemented for scientific management of population, she added.

Homnath Dahal of Nepali Congress said attention should be given towards solving the problems faced by users of community forest, special programme should be launched in the Himalayan areas in order to protect medicinal plants and herbs, and to control population growth. He stressed the need to provide continuity to the environment programmes introduced by the previous government.

Govinda Bikram Shaha of RPP spoke of the need to implement the bio-diversity programme, stop irregularities in community forest management and run standard population and environment programmes at the district level.

Dilaram Acharya of Rastriya Janamorcha said smuggling of timber is a big problem in the terai while the problem of the hills is soil erosion. Concrete programme have not been introduced to control floods and landslides and promote forest in the Chure hills.

CPN-UML’s Jagannath Khatiwada said destruction of forest and soil erosion taking place in Chure and Mahabharat ranges have affected Udayapur district but no budget has been allocated to check these problems. The problems of landless settlers and resettlement should be solved to save forest resources. The community forest should not be used by the government, he added.

Ram Kumar Chaudhary of the Nepali Congress said forest encroachment, soil-erosion and imbalance in the environment has led to the decline in growth of forest and has decreased the number of wildlife and medicinal plants. New effective progra-mmes should be introduced to control population.