A month after the ban on commercial charcoal burning and rosewood logging among others, the Savannah Regional Charcoal Producers and Buyers Association says it is unhappy about how its members are hounded from their sites without prior notice.

According to them, they need about five months extension to be able to exhaust their raw materials which were financed through loans secured from banks.

The association Chairman, Mallam Zackaria Tingani said they all followed due process with the chiefs before settling down to work and should not be chased away without notice.

"If you chase us out today, it will be better to stab us with a knife because what will my family feed on. There is no work anywhere. That is their main source of livelihood.

"And apart from that, they will also cease our materials like three years ago how they collected my 817 bags of charcoal I bought with ¢81,000. So, there is no problem but they should just give us the 5 months extension to park and go," he indicated.

He further stated that "we fell trees waiting for rainfall because now there is no fresh grass around. So, if we can't get fresh mud or grass to cover the logs and burn the charcoal, we will need five months to do that because some of us collected money like ¢5,000 or ¢10,000 from the banks to work."

A buyer, Sabana Adu Gymfi noted that "with this deadline and its stuff, if am leaving and my vehicle is parked and the council people come with their tickets, youth also come with their tickets, Yagbowura's and Gonjaland Youth Association including the Assembly all issue their tickets and then the Police Commander comes and you show him all the tickets yet, he arrests my Vehicle, it doesn't serve any justice. So the Commander himself is not helping matters."

Another buyer, Mr Kwame Sarpong added, "we are not saying we will not go, no, we are more than ready but because our materials are still in the bush, if we say we are leaving, it will be difficult. That's why we asked for five months to enable us to prepare and go.

"Even, if they want, they should lead us to append our signatures to a document so that after the five months and we are still here, they should send us to court but the time given is too short and can't be used to park please".

But attempts by JoyNews to reach out to the Savannah regional minister Saeed Muhazu Jibril for his comments was unsuccessful.