The Ogun State Government has begun to reap the benefits accruing from the automation of forest operations as it has translated into increased revenue for the government.
Commissioner for Forestry, Chief Kolawole Lawal, made the disclosure in Abeokuta after a training programme organised by the Ministry for Foresters, to get residents acquainted with the automation processes that had been introduced for its logging operations and activities in all the forest reserves across the state.
He said the automation system which had been extended to all other forest reserves became imperative having evaluated its efficacy in blocking leakages in its reserve in area J4 where the system had been test run, saying the result was satisfactory.
Kolawole said ”In just one week of implementation of the automated system in one of the reserves, the revenue generated from the area has rapidly increased as the process has cubed leakages, its time saving and smooth to operate that is the reason we decided to extend it and upgrade our operations across board.
“We are now into a process which is devoid of foul play, this is a Ministry that had in recent past automated about two of its logging locations, J4 and J4 projects, but we still have other areas where our people still use Out Turn Volume (OTV), which is a manual way of logging,” he added.