Doina Pana quits as Minister of Waters and Forests, for health-related reasons

Doina Pana announced yesterday that she was quitting her role as Minister of Waters and Forests, claiming her decision is due to health issues.

Pana presented an activity report where she claims that the measures she took regarding forests in her two ministerial terms led her to “fulfilling her mission” of drastically decreasing illegal deforestation in Romania.

A proposal for a new minister will be decided upon during an Executive National Committee session of the ruling PSD party, according to party leader Liviu Dragnea.

Doina Pana was named minister at the beginning of Mihai Tudose’s term as prime-minister, at the end of June 2017. She had also occupied the same role in 2014, in the Ponta Government. She is 60 years old and she is also a member of the Chamber of Deputies and a PSD vice president.

In the review of her ministerial activity, Doina Pana said that measures such as the Forest Radar, the 112 emergency system for wood transports, the new Forestry Code and a new law of forestry contraventions, led to the illegal cutting of wood to decrease from 8.8 million cubic meters/year to only 0.4 million cm/year.

The Forest Radar does not allow the acquisition of illegally-cut wood and tracks the wood from where it is cut until its final destination in either furniture production or export. Doina Pana claims that the electronic system works very well and that it’s a unique system in Europe and possibly the whole world.

Another measure taken by Pana was offering financial compensation for owners of forest land in protected areas, where wood cutting is not permitted. By the end of 2017, 586 requests for compensation were submitted, and 506 of them were approved.

The Ministry will soon finish the “produselepadurii.ro” (products of the forest) website, dedicated to the centralisation of auction announcements for wood in public property forests, currently found on individual websites of forest land administrators, which are more difficult to follow efficiently.

When it comes to waters, Doina Pana claims that the second phase of the Integrated Control of Nitrates Pollution Program has been initiated, as well as a new phase in the reduction of coastal erosion and rehabilitation of beaches in the southern part of the Black Sea coastline, which she calls “one of the largest infrastructure projects in the last 27 years”, worth around EUR 700 million.