West Manggarai Regency has officially appointed facilitators for Timber Legality Verification (TLV). A training on TLV was held at Prundi Hotel in Labuan Bajo city on 14-19 May 2017. The attendees were 18 participants from various backgrounds, from forest farmers to representatives of West Manggarai government. The training was organized by Burung Indonesia in collaboration with the Training Centre for Environmental and Forestry Human Resources (HREF Training Centre) with funding support from the European Union.
After being educated and trained, the participants are expected to be able to transfer their knowledge and practice various skills on TLV to the owners of private forest and small/medium industry.
The Head of HREF Training Centre, Tri Joko Mulyono, stated that between the years of 2009-2015 Indonesia has implemented various policies regarding production forest management and a TLV system which is expected to be a method to achieve sustainable forest management.
"In preparing for the implementation of the regulation, capacity building of the parties is necessary to be increased. For this reason, we need to upgrade knowledge, skills, and work attitudes of VLK facilitators in private forests and small/medium industries," he added when closing the training series, Saturday (19/05).
The encouragement for improving forestry governance comes in particular from the desire to eradicate illegal logging and trading through a management approach to legal timber distribution. For this reason, the training was expected to produce facilitators who are able to oversee the verification of timber legality in West Manggarai for sustainable forest management.
“The TLV is expected to increase the credibility of timber products in West Manggarai so that forest entrepreneurs, both upstream and downstream, will be better able to implement sustainable forest management. In the context of maintaining credibility, the role of a competent TLV facilitator is very important,” said Geanisa V. Putri, Liaison and Forest Management Officer of Burung Indonesia.
To fill the gap in knowledge and technical capabilities, in order to prepare VLK facilitators in West Manggarai Regency, this training has a rational basis. The learning process is carried out by team teaching in which there is a role of facilitator and role of resource persons so that learning objectives can be achieved. (MEI)