Dedza West to plant 17 000 trees using CDF

By Sellah Singini – Mana.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Dedza West Constituency, Phillip Chinkhondo has said that he would use part of the money for the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to plant over 17,000 tree seedlings in his constituency.

In an interview after a launch of the tree planting exercise in his constituency at Chimwangalu Primary School on Tuesday, he said 17 primary schools are expected to plant trees in this year’s tree planting season.

“I started this initiative in 2017, whereby I have been encouraging all the primary schools in my area to be planting trees every year. As of now all the 17 primary schools in my area have school woodlots. Every school is encouraged to plant at least one thousand trees every year and some schools plant more than that,” Chinkhondo said.

“Since we started the initiative I have seen that many schools have woodlots that have over eight thousand trees. So far we have planted over one hundred thousand trees for the whole constituency and this is a good development as it will reduce cases of school blocks being blown off by strong winds,” he added.

District Commissioner (DC) for Dedza, Emmanuel Bulukutu commended Chinkhondo for the initiative of using CDF in planting trees in his area saying that other MPs in Dedza should emulate from him.

“We know that most of the times CDF is used in the construction of bridges, school blocks, and maintenance of health facilities which lead to cutting of trees. It is therefore a good initiative to use part of CDF money to plant trees to replace those being used in various construction projects,” he said.

Bulukutu said Dedza is expected to plant over one million trees this year.

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