Kenya’s Timber Manufacturers Association has appealed to the government to lift a five-year-old logging ban.

The association claims that only three firms associated with one family are logging on state forests where they are felling more trees than its members used to before the ban was imposed in 2000.

The ban was in response to concerns that forest cover in the country had fallen below the internationally recommended 3%.

Association chairman Samuel Gitonga said the ban had fuelled theft of forest produce, made more than 100,000 jobless and left machinery useless.

His members also questioned why the government would not allow them to replant trees in forests while the three firms were allowed to undertake the exercise.