Eco-activists accused Ministry of Ecology of selling off lands of national parks

Baku /09.12.22 /Turan: The "Ecofront" environmental movement made an appeal to the public, as well as to the Prosecutor's Office due to the actions of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, in which the head of this department is accused of selling off forest lands.

"This time the goal is national parks - specially protected natural areas. About 7,000 hectares of land removed from the Ministry's balance sheet and prepared for transfer to the Ministry of Agriculture and local executive authorities have already been agreed with the oligarch entrepreneurs. To do this, an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers has been submitted," says the appeal distributed via the Facebook social network.

Eco-activists regard this step of the environmental department as an act of putting up for sale of land. "2000 hectares of the territory of the Shirvan National Park (SNP), 4000 hectares of the Kyzylagach National Park and nearly 1000 hectares of the Garayazinsky State Nature Reserve are put up for sale. Recently, by the same method, Minister Mukhtar Babayev transferred 518 hectares of SNP land to the head of the Penitentiary Service of the Ministry of Justice, Jeyhun Hasanov," eco-activists claim.

According to the "Ecofront" movement, there is a lot of official arbitrariness and corruption behind these processes. "Irrigation of thousands of hectares of land in arid areas requires serious water resources. As a result, the surrounding villages will be even more deprived of irrigation water," "Ecofront" activists believe.

So far, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources has not responded to the accusations of the "Ecofront" movement. -08C-