Member of Parliament (MP) for Blantyre City South Constituency Noel Lipipa says there should be laws making it compulsory for MPs, Councillors as well as shadow Councillors and MPs to plant trees in their areas every year.
Lipipa said this in Parliament yesterday when he was presenting a report on catchment areas around Mulunguzi Dam by Southern Region Water Board.
The parliamentarian who is also Chairperson of Parliamentary committee on government assurances and public sector reforms expressed concerns on how Malawi is doing in terms of conserving the environment.
He said if Malawi is really serious about tree planting and saving catchment areas, there is need to find some radical ways of doing it.
“We need to pass laws here at Parliament that on top of qualifications, for one to stand for parliamentary seat or councilor or presidential seat, they should be planting in a period of five years or 1 year.
“If we say 300, 500 or 1000 trees for councillors then 1000, 2000 or 3000 trees for MPs, we can see a very big progress in tree planting. Having a target like a member of parliament has to plant 1000 trees every year for the next five years, it’s going to be 965,000 trees so you can see that as a country we can have so many trees planted by us MPs including our councilors,” said Lipipa.
Among other things, the report presented by Lipipa highlighted the challenges that Southern Region Board (SRWB) faced with regards to the intermittent supply of water for Zomba City and one of the challenges observed was inadequate land allocated to SRWB by the Department of forestry as catchment area leading to the depletion of water in Mulunguzi Dam.
It was observed with concern that this challenge delayed progress in achieving a reform focused area of managing catchment areas by SRWB as stipulated, in the Performance Contracts Agreements.
