Embark on weekly exercise to plant trees – NPP’s Nyamah to govt

Deputy Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party(NPP) Richard Nyamah, has called on government to make it a national policy to set up a week every year to plant trees in the country to save the earth.

He said he would wish that government would initiate a system that the country will plant some 5 million trees a day which will amount to 35 million a week, that will go a long way in complementing the global agenda of planting approximately 8 billion trees worldwide.

Mr. Nyamah commended government for initiating a system through the auspices of the Forestry Commission to make it possible to plant about 5 million trees a day that will go a long way in enriching and revitalizing our earth.

He said this in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the New Day show on TV3, Tuesday, June 8.

“We need to save our earth, there is a target of about 8 billion trees to be planted worldwide and this is part of that effort. The ministry in just a day has put together a structure, a system that will allow 5 million trees to be planted. I would wish that we are able to probably set up some system, maybe a week in every year.

It becomes a government policy. If we can do 5 million trees in a day, in seven days it will be about 35 million trees. If we were doing 5 million trees a day multiplied by seven that would be 35 million trees and I’m saying that it should become a government policy. My suggestion is that we reserve a week in a year that we do that, to probably send as many people out there to plant a tree or two as a way of reclaiming the earth, it is an environmental disaster that we all have to attend to” he appealed to government.

Asked about the complaint by the Youth In Afforestation that they have not been paid for their job done so how do the government engage them to plant trees again since National Tree Planting Day is in the offing, he replied that “Sir John was very passionate about it, what I know is that the numbers that the Finance Ministry actually ratified to be employed were less than Sir John took on.

Because of his passion and he had a target in mind but their operation was within a budget so it brought a huge burden on the budget. These are some of the things, we have a lot of things that we need to achieve in a very short time but we have limited resources to do it.

“So Sir John used his own ingenious ways to bring about sixty thousand people on board when they required when the ratification was for ten thousand, how do you take care of those things? I am aware that the ministry put some system in place that something had to go round for everybody but not what they originally budgeted for to take care of this. But like we are saying these are the reasons why we all will have to pinch ourselves a bit to pay more to take care of them”.

On the subject of the ‘Operation Halt’ Task Force burning excavators found in the act of illegal mining, he said “that video is a vindication of the steps taken by the President, the Minister of Lands and Forestry and the Defense Ministry.

Even with the burning, you have gone to the Atewa Forest and found people defying and all that, when they did the fourth phase, even after putting out a communique that there will be some rounds on the Ankobra, the thinking was that the people will abscond, they went they got people, they burnt. That tells you how criminal minded the people are, they do not care which government is in place”.