The Rt.Hon. Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga urges Ugandans to adopt a culture of planting trees during all social events that they hold.
The Speaker made this call while launching the one million tree planting campaign spearheaded by the Young Water Professionals under the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC).
The event which took place at the NWSC offices in Bugolobi on Wednesday 11th October, 2017 marks the launch of the campaign aimed at planting one million trees in 23 districts which NWSC serves.
“We should plant trees during birthday parties, weddings and even funerals. You can imagine if we planted 15 trees at every marriage function we had,” she said.
Kadaga said that she would engage the Ministry of Finance ensure that the Tree Fund is included in the Budget for the next financial year.
“I am impressed by the initiative taken by NWSC in the fight against climate change. I further implore them to step up the campaign and plant more than million trees,” Kadaga said.
Kadaga also appealed to other corporations to take part in tree planting and thanked the youth who have taken charge of the situation.
The Minister of Water and Environment, Hon. Sam Cheptoris said that it is extremely difficult to get water and expensive to purify water in a degraded environment.
“As the Ministry we are doubling our efforts to restore the forest cover to 18% by 2020. We want to plant 20 million trees per year,” he said.
Eng. Dr. Christopher Ebal, Board Chairman of NWSC said that plan is to plant one million trees spread all over the 23 towns they cover. He said that there is need to protect the environment to get more water, and the trees which purify and increase water catchment.
“The rate at which the environment is being depleted is worrying but if we keep planting trees we should be sorted, we need to avert the long droughts, hot days and heavy rains,” Eng. Ebal said.
The NWSC Managing Director, Eng. Dr. Silva Mugisha said that NWSC used to supply 61 billion litres which has now grown to 76 billion litres of water.
He said that there is a need to plant trees because there is a growing number of people who need water.
