Tree-planting season to produce 60 million trees

The Forestry Department says it plans to plant about 60 million trees nationwide during this tree planting season spanning from December 15 2014 to April 15 this year.

Deputy-director of forestry, Thomas Makhambera, said the department has managed to produce over 60 million trees on customary land, plantation and forest reserve areas.

Makhambera said this during a recent dialogue that Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining Atupele Muluzi had with staff of the ministry in Lilongwe.

“To protect trees, the department has invested in capacity building by training 770 workers in how to control bushfires. We are also planting more trees during this season,” he said.

Addressing the ministry staff, Muluzi said the country’s economic growth depends on natural resources, energy and mining.

“The officers have worked hard as a team in the year ending and managed to focus on the vision of the ministry and in 2015, we will make sure that the culture of integrity is there as issues of transparency and accountability will be looked into,” said Muluzi.

He added that the ministry is committed to discharging its duties and encouraged the staff to use the funding allocated prudently to accomplish their goals.

Speaking earlier, director of mines, Charles Kaphwiyo said Malawi lacks a culture of mining and that the expectation of people is higher than what is explored.

“There is a need to sensitise rural communities to issues of mines; it is not all the time that when a company is trying to identify or explore mines it will do that.

“There are technical challenges since some of the mines cannot be explored due to quantity or machines needed to use when exploring,” said Kaphwiyo.

He added that support infrastructure is not complete as good roads are needed to link mines to the market areas and insufficient power produced in the country also affects the exploration of mines as there is need for high use of power.—Mana