Community Relations Officer
(Forestry, Logging & Mill Operations)
Full Time
Africa, Uganda
Green Resources is Africa’s leading forestation company and a leader in East African wood manufacturing. The company has 25,000 ha of standing forest in Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda, established through its own planting activities. It operates East Africa’s largest sawmill in Tanzania and electricity pole and charcoal plants in Tanzania and Uganda and is also one of the first global companies to receive carbon revenue from its plantation forests.
Busoga Forestry Company (U) Limited (BFC) is a private afforestation company fully owned by Green Resources AS (www.greenresources.no ). The core business of BFC is to establish commercial forest plantations for industrial wood production, production of power transmission poles, timber, lump charcoal, charcoal briquettes and sales of carbon credits. BFC is based in Jinja, with industrial operations at Masese and Bukaleba.
The Group is also developing commercial plantations in Mozambique and Tanzania, with a large forest industrial operation at Sao Hill – Mafinga in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. It is the African (ex South Africa) leader in FSC certified plantation forests.
BFC wishes to recruit a Community Relations Officer based at our Kachung Forest project in Dokolo district to oversee the Community Project operations.
Job Title: Community Relations Officer
Department: Plantation
Reports to: Senior Plantation Manager
Job Location: Kachung Forest Plantation, (Dokolo District, Northern Uganda)
Key Tasks.
• Provide liaison between the company and the community in matters of economic and social development.
• Together with the rest BFC Management and community leaders, you will agree on a prioritized list of development projects for each village and an implementation program.
• Preparation of departmental annual budget for approval by management, and implementation of activities as per an approved budget.
• Develop and implement training programs, activities and/or services aimed to improve community health, education, sports, and Livelihood.
• Organize and implement targeted training programs for surrounding communities and/or staff as required, to cover basic health issues, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, etc as well as environmental conservation including danger of wild fires.
• Develop a functional stakeholder communication strategy, identifying and mapping out stakeholders, and taking charge on regular stakeholders’ consultative processes for both primary and secondary stakeholders.
• Institute a community monitoring and evaluation process in the company and carry out regular reporting of all key issues.
• According to the company grievance mechanism policy, analyze complaints from the members of the community and implement an efficient response system.
• Any other duties as assigned by the Senior Plantation Manager.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:
• A Bachelors degree in Development Studies from a recognized University and at least 2 years working experience with knowledge of the Local language is an added advantage.
• High integrity and strong interpersonal and team building skills; written and oral communication skills.
• Ability to work on one’s own initiative and work to meet challenging targets.
• Must be able to produce the required results with minimal supervision.