By Emmanuel Moyo
Karonga District Commissioner, Paul Kalilombe has called on leaders in the District to actively participate in tree planting saying they are crucial in the exercise.
Kalilombe made the remarks on Thursday when the District officially launched tree planting exercise at Nthambo in Group Village Head (GVH) Muchenjere, Traditional Authority Kyungu under the theme ‘Healthy trees, forests, economy and people’.
“Tree planting is a big issue, so when having such activities it is good that leaders be it political or traditional leaders should show up to participate actively, when these leaders do not attend such activities, their subjects might tend to underrate the exercise, so they need to make themselves available and participate,” he said.
He has since pleaded with traditional leaders to help in protecting and preserving the trees that have been planted from being damaged by livestock.
“We are pleading with chiefs to help us protect these trees by telling their subjects who own livestock to keep the livestock away from damaging the trees because in Karonga we have so many cattle just loitering around,” he said.
On his part, senior GVH Muchenjere made an assurance to protect the trees that have been planted calling them necessary to human life.
“We are going to take good care of these trees because they are very essential in our day to day activities and we will continue to plant more trees,” he said.
In a separate interview, Karonga District Environmental Officer, Khumbo Mbewe said the trees will help in the implementation of a pending irrigation scheme in the near future.
“Irrigation schemes demand for water which come from rains brought through availability of trees that is why we have decided to plant the trees here as the scheme will help in food security as communities will be able to farm twice or thrice a year,” he said.
The forestry season runs from December 15 to April 15 but due to inadequate resources and rainfall patterns experienced this season, the district delayed to undertake the activity of tree planting.
