BY BOSCO MAGARE- CHEMELIL

Chemelil Sugar Company has entered into a tree-planting and environmental conservation partnership programme with Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI).

The partnership programme was launched in one acre portion of the sugar Company’s nucleus estate, where Company employees and top management team members led by Interim Managing Director Jacqueline Kotonya, planted tree seedlings, donated by Maseno-based Kefri station.

The Chemelil Sugar Company and Kefri partnership programme is known as “Tree-planting Programme for Environmental Conservation to Mitigate against Global Climate Change in Support of Kenya Kwanza Government Bottom-up Transformation Economic Agenda (BETA): 2022-2027”

Kefri Maseno station Director John Otuma PhD, donated 500 assorted tree seedlings comprising various species; Bischosia Japonica (botanical name), Grallea Robusta and Eucalyptus, among others, which were delivered to Chemelil Sugar Company by Kefri’s Forester Hatibu Mwanjenje.

Chemelil Sugar Company Interim Director Kotonya lauds the tree-planting and environmental conservation partnership programme with Kefri and says it will enable the Company meet its annual tree-planting target of 36,000 seedlings, allocated the parastatal by Kenya Kwanza Government. The Government has also allocated tree-planting targets to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Separately, the sugar Company’s Strategy Manager Moffat Omondi who is responsible for implementation and monitoring of Chemelil Sugar Company’s Government Performance Contract (PC) commitments signed between the Company and Government through its parent Ministry of Agriculture says under the arrangement the Company is expected to plant 36,000 trees annually.

“The Company has signed a PC target to plant 36,000 trees per year. And, to actualize this Company target, each employee out of the Company’s total workforce of 1,200 is expected to plant 30 trees each month, which will translate into 36,000 trees per year” Omondi explains.

Speaking during the launch of the partnership programme, Kefri Forester Mwanjenje says, the tree-planting programme is in line with the Government of Kenya (GoK) target of ensuring a total 15 billion trees are planted by the year 2032, in a collaborative effort involving MDAs, private organizations and individual Kenyan citizens.

“The Government expects and encourages each individual Kenya citizen to plant 300 tree seedlings every year, until the target year of 2032, when the country is expected to have planted 15 billion trees” Mwanjenje explains.

The Forester encourages every Company employee, stakeholders such as cane farmers, cane transporters, cane harvesting and crop maintenance contractors, sugar and molasses buyers, suppliers and members of the company’s surrounding community, among others, to strive and grow 300 trees per year.

Mwanjenje says there several tree-planting strategies that MDAs, companies, private organizations, employees and individual Kenyans can adopt, to achieve their set tree-planting targets.

“Employees and Chemelil Sugar Company stakeholders including MDAs and other individual Kenyans are encouraged by Kefri to use occasions such as Company corporate events and individual birthday parties to plant trees” the Forester advices.

Mwanjenje further says that in order for MDAs, companies, private organizations and individual Kenyan to keep records of the trees they have planted per year, it is advisable to download from their mobile phone play-store, the following Kefri App Jaza Mti.

“Through use of the Jaza mti App, MDAs, companies, other private organizations and individual Kenyans can upload their tree-planting activities and this App will serve as a valuable and convenient platform, to record and track your target for planting trees” Mwanjenje says.