By Genesis Munde
Chitipa district council chairperson Wedson Sinkhonde on Friday advised residents of Chitipa to take up responsibility of planting and taking care of trees saying trees have the potential of transforming landscape and improving the livelihoods of communities.
He was speaking as guest of honour during the launch of the district’s tree planting season at Ishalikira primary school in the area of Traditional Authority Mwaulambya in the district.
In his speech, he advised parents and teachers to teach their children and learners a behaviour of conserving the environment as a way of countering negative impacts of climate change being experienced in the district and country at large.
“Planting and taking care of trees should be taken as everyone’s responsibility because climate change effects like shortage of rains, and drought are affecting all of us in one way or the other.”
“We have the potential to improve the state of our trees and forests by planting more trees which will bring us more benefits like improved rainfall and agricultural productivity that would benefit our livelihoods,” said Sinkhonde.
In an interview, District Forest Officer for Chitipa Moses Chilongo said about 500 trees of seedlings were planted during the launch at Ishalikira primary School and said the launch was targeting primary school learners in order to teach them about trees and forests conservation.
“The reasons of choosing primary schools is because the youths form a majority of Malawi’s population by 65 percent so we need to train them that when they go to their respective homes they can also continue the activities of planting trees,” said Chilongo.
In his remarks at the launch, Village headman Nachimphu said it was crucial for everyone take tree planting as a habit saying without trees people would suffer a lot therefore he pleaded with all community members to take it upon themselves to care for trees and forests.
Malawi Government launched the national tree planting season on December 18, 2019 under the theme ‘trees and forests fir transformed landscape and livelihoods’.
