The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has vowed to enhance environmental conservation and community empowerment through tree planting and mangrove forest conservation in the Coast region.
The organization has taken deliberate steps to map out localities where mangrove forests were threatened by degradation or face acute deforestation, so as to uplift the surrounding communities by sourcing, purchasing seedlings and sensitizing them on the need for conservation.
Speaking in Dongo Kundu, where KRA staff from the Southern region carried out a tree planting exercise, Southern Region Coordinator (RC) Lawrence Siele said, the Authority aims to fully align itself with the government initiative to plant 15 billion trees in a decade.
Siele said that so far KRA is on the right trajectory in terms of the targeted number of trees planted and earmarked areas for afforestation and rehabilitation.
He said that the local community has been given the prerogative to lead these efforts with KRA playing a facilitative role, since the inhabitants resonate and benefit the most from conservation of the mangroves.
“We have developed a partnership with the community with the assistance of the Kenya Forest Service so that we can uplift the local communities through sourcing and buying of trees. Through this partnership we have placed the community at the forefront,” said Siele.
KRA planted a total of 10,000 trees when the country marked the recent National Tree Planting Day, being the first phase of a targeted total of 34,000 trees the authority intends to plant in the coastal region.
The RC also lauded the strides KRA has taken to increase revenue collection in the Southern region, alluding to key factors including digitization of revenue collection mechanisms that have tremendously closed the loopholes that were occasioned by manual transactions and the introduction of revenue service assistants who have centralized revenue mobilization.
“As the Southern region, digitization of our services has been a game changer for us and we are looking to improve service delivery and enhance swift revenue collection with the addition of over 100 revenue service assistants,” added Siele.
Meanwhile, KRA has a projected target of Sh642 billion for the Southern Region with customs accounting for Sh618 billion and Sh24 billion accrued through domestic taxes.
By Andrew Hinga
