KMA to plant one million trees in metropolis


The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), in collaboration with Forest Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), GIZ and the Department of Parks and Gardens, will in the next four years plant one million trees within the Kumasi metropolis.

The project, dubbed ‘Me and My Tree’ forms part of the ongoing Kumasi Urban Forestry project aimed at greening the city to make it regain its former glory as the Garden City of West Africa.

The assembly will collaborate with the Ghana Education Service (GES) to implement the project by ensuring that schools and schoolchildren take active part in the programme.

For the first year, GIZ will be supplying the assembly with 7,000 seedlings, while the KMA itself has procured 10,000 of the seedlings, with KNUST also supporting with some of the seedlings.

Already, teachers drawn from some basic schools within the metropolis are undertaking a practical training programme at FORIG in how to plant trees for them to survive and grow well.

The trees will be planted along drive ways, ceremonial roads, open spaces, school compounds and in front of houses.

Aside restoring the greenery to the city, the project is also to inculcate environmental awareness in schoolchildren and to teach them the importance of planting trees.

Launching the programme in Kumasi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), mr Kojo Bonsu, entreated all residents to embrace the programme and assist the assembly to successfully implement it.

He said landlords who wished to plant trees in front of their houses should contact the assembly, KNUST or FORIG for seedlings.

He said there were lots of benefits in having trees around as apart from greening the environment, trees also served as windbreaks, checked erosion “and provide oxygen for man to breathe in.”

Besides these, he said trees also acted as purifiers as they collected pollutants, and provided shade for human beings and animals on sunny days.

Mr Bonsu said the assembly had begun the tree-planting exercise, and that 171 seedlings  had been planted along the Asokwa interchange and the Anloga Junction.

The MCE said ‘Me and My Tree was a competition’, explaining that the schools that would take part in it stood the chance of winning desktop and laptop computers and other school items.

According to him, schoolchildren who would be able to nurture the seedlings into trees would be taken on a trip outside the country for excursion and would have the opportunity to win other mouthwatering prizes.

He, thus, encouraged schoolchildren to take active part in the competition to enable them to win the prizes at stake.

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