Top: West Water’s camp in Tonwein, Nimba County. The DayLight/Gerald Koinyeneh
ByEsau J. Farr
GAYPUE TOWN, Grand Bassa County – Local leaders in a Grand Bassa community forest have seized a logging company’s equipment for failing to pay their benefits.
Locals seized six West Water Group (Liberia) Inc.’s earthmovers, obstructing the company’s operations in the District Three B&C Community Forest in Grand Bassa.
“It is unfair for them to come and take away our resources and fail to live up to promises they made. So, the community people seized those machines,” said Jeremiah Whoe, Chief Officer of the B&C Community Forest.
“We seriously regret West Water coming into our forest,” Whoe lamented. “It would have been better for our forest to remain standing until better investors come and take over it,” added Whoe.
In April 2021, District 3 B&C Community Forest signed a 15-year contract, leasing 24,175 hectares to West Water for hand pumps, a clinic, and a school.
Four years on, it owes locals thousands in land rental, harvesting, and education fees. Moreover, it has failed to build a clinic, a school, and a market building in line with the agreement.
To date, West Water owes the community US$26,000, according to the community forest. The company has constructed four out of the eight hand pumps the contract requires in landowning communities.
West Water owes the community an unspecified amount in harvesting fees, having only paid US$6,100 in 2021. West Water exported 18,683.309 cubic meters of timber last year, according to the FDA records. That means the company should have paid locals US$28,024 for that shipment alone, based on their contract.
Locals also said they were holding West Water’s machines because it had abandoned hundreds of logs in the community forest. Deserting logs in the forest for over three weeks violates the Regulation on Abandoned Logs, Timber, and Timber Products.
Omega Jimmy, a local leader, said they seized the equipment because West Water ignored their warnings.
“We heard that they were about to take their machines from the bush and run away from the community. We quickly moved in and stopped them because they came and exploited our resources, and want to leave the community with nothing,” Jimmy said.
Jeffrey Gao, West Water’s CEO and majority shareholder, admitted his company is indebted to the community.
“I did not calculate the exact amount that we owe the community, but it is similar to what the community said,” said Gao.
However, he blamed it on the community’s repeated disruptions of his operations.
“The community people have looted our properties and set up repeated roadblocks. They have caused me to lose over a million dollars to the extent that I am almost bankrupt,” added Gao.
The community rejects this claim, saying West Water was begging them on one hand and accusing them on the other.
“No, we did not loot anything,” Jimmy said. “This is a double standard. West Water cannot be begging us to go back to the negotiation table and at the same time accusing the community of damaging its properties.
Meanwhile, tension heightens in the area.
Last month, a meeting organized by the office of the Grand Bassa superintendent failed to resolve the dispute. Weeks later, community forest leaders called for the cancellation of West Water’s contract.
District elders have issued a traditional order, preventing West Water from removing its equipment from the community forest, Jimmy said.
Early June last year, West Water wrote to the Ministry of Justice, asking it to urgently intervene to save his company from “robbery, theft, and damage” to his properties.
“If not handled urgently, [this] could lead to the company closing its operations and leaving Liberia, something that would greatly impact the country negatively,” read the letter.
This was a Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ) production.
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