Simón Berti: "Timber SMEs need support to face the crisis, not stigmas"
In a letter to the newspaper El Mercurio, Simón Berti, National President of the Association of Forest Engineers, stated that recently, the Regional Ministerial Secretary of Labor for the Biobío Region linked the closure of sawmills in recent years in her region to the decrease in timber theft, arguing that the acquisition of wood through irregular means allowed many sawmills to survive.
"This is just one more in a series of unfortunate statements that various officials of the current Government have made about the forestry sector, which only reflects an ideological position hostile to the activity and its people, rather than a diagnosis based on objective elements," he stated.
He added that regarding the closure of sawmills and the loss of more than three thousand jobs in recent years, especially in the Biobío Region, their causes can be traced back at least a decade, and are due to a substantial drop in wood availability caused by the rural violence crisis, intentional forest fires, land usurpation, the extortion of landowners, and the absence of public policies to boost a sector key to the economy of the south of the country, both economically and environmentally.
"The wood supply crisis hits timber SMEs (small and medium-sized sawmills) the hardest, and not only do we not see empathy and support for their difficult situation, but we see with frustration that regional authorities stigmatize this sector by indirectly treating them as thieves or receivers of stolen goods. We are seeing a very bad end of the government for our sector. If there is no removal of this authority, it would mean that the entire Government thinks like her," Berti emphasized.
