President William Ruto’s daughter Charlene Ruto has called on the Narok residents to major in planting trees so as to increase the forest cover in the county.
Ms. Ruto who spoke when she paid a courtesy call to Governor Patrick Ntutu’s office said President Ruto had committed to plant over five billion trees in five years’ time, asking the residents to take individual responsibility of planting trees to achieve this dream.
She reiterated that she works with a group of youths who are moving around the country sensitizing people to plant trees and Narok County was the 12th county they had visited.
“The president has called upon every individual to plant at least 300 trees as a beginning of this climate change action. This is why we are moving around the county encouraging the people to plant trees,” she said.
She called on the young people to be actively involved in planting of the trees as they were more at risk of suffering from climate change effects than the older generation.
Ms. Ruto observed that planting trees would also create job opportunities as many people who put up tree nursery beds would earn a lot of money as organizations and individuals will buy trees from them.
Narok Governor Patrick Ntutu commended Ms. Ruto for the great initiative she had started saying she was a role model to the many youth in the county.
Ntutu said most of the leaders in his government and the County Assembly were youthful and asked them to take the challenge of leading in planting trees.
“We are very willing to continue working with you to address various issues that affect us including early marriages, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and school dropout,” he said.
Ntutu asked the Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) to prioritize matters of environment in the County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) to allocate a sizeable budget on planting of trees in the county.
The governor said that the county aims to plant over 3.6 million trees in a period of 10 years.
By John Koyiet Kaleke and Ann Salaton
