Dart plants 1,000 trees to support government initiative
Dar es Salaam. The government’s campaign to plant one million trees this year received a boost yesterday after the Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit Agency (Dart) planted 1,000 trees along the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor.
The initiative follows Vice President Philip Mpango’s recent launch of a campaign to plant one million trees in partnership with NMB Bank and Tanzania Forest Services Agency (TFS).
Ubungo district commissioner Hashimu Komba who attended the tree-planting yesterday said the trees will even give the city a better look.
"The component of environment conservation matters a lot as it will bring a new look to the city. I applaud NMB for the initiative of planting to conserve the environment," he said.
He urged Dart to ensure that they participate in taking care of the trees and protecting them as the BRT corridor had a lot of users.
"Leaders and government workers should ensure that there is a proper use of each area. Traders and pedestrians should know their limits so that the trees are not distracted by human activities and fail to grow,” he said.
NMB chief of retail banking Mr Filber Mponzi said that due to the fact that they recognise and value environment and that is why they set aside Sh2 billion from their profit of Sh429 they got last year, to make the important campaign successful.
“At NMB, we have a culture of using one percent of our profit per year to support the education, health and disaster, but this year we were supposed to spend Sh4.2 billion. The Board of Directors approved an additional Sh2 billion to be directed to the environment, so we will use Sh6.2 billion,” he said.
Dart executive director Dr Edwin Mhede thanked NMB for collaborating with the agency in implementing the Vice President directives in which Dr Mpango requesting all government institutions, public organisations to focus on the campaign aimed at reducing the effects of climate change.
“We thank NMB for the innovative idea of coming up with this campaign, which for us is an opportunity to enable us to restore the natural vegetation in the soil of our roads, which is removed by its construction. This campaign will help us restore the vegetation which was removed,” he said.
He said the planting of 1,000 trees will not end today, but we are also planning to plant more trees in all BRT corridors. We have 154 kilometers of BRT corridors. We are going to make sure that we plant trees.”
Dart chairman to the advisory board Dr Florence Turuka thanked NMB for giving them an opportunity to participate in the tree planting that will be planted from Ubungo to Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) in BRT corridor.
