Samuel Abu Jinapor
The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor Wednesday said government has already distributed more than five million seedlings to the district and regional offices of the Forestry Commission and district assemblies in readiness for the Green Ghana Day.
The Green Ghana Project is intended to plant five million trees on Friday, June 11, 2021 across the country and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would plant a commemorative tree at the precincts of the Jubilee House, the seat of government, at 1300 hours on that day.
He said the Forestry Commission had marked out sites for tree planting on the Green Ghana Day, but excluded degraded mined out areas, which had been polluted with heavy metals, saying that a national reclamation programme would deal with the polluted mined areas.
At a media briefing in Accra to update the public on preparations made for the exercise, Mr Abu Jinapor said the Forestry Commission had produced six million seedlings, including; economic trees like Wawa, Mango, Rosewood and Shea trees, and already distributed them to the 16 regions.
He said, for instance, the Greater Accra Region had received 450,000 seedlings, Central Region-400, 000, Western Region-250,000, Western North-420,000, and Ashanti Region-one million seedlings.
The rest were: Ahafo-170,000,Bono-250,000,Bono East-300,000, Eastern-750,000, Volta-200,000, Oti-150,000,Northern-250,000,North East-120,000, Savannah-250,000,Upper East-170,000, and Upper West-150,000.
The Minister said the Ministry, through the Forestry Commission, was determined to restore the depleted forest cover, which was about 8.2 million hectares, representing 80 per cent of the country’s land area, ravaged by the negative human activities such as illegal mining and lumbering.
Currently, the country’s forest cover stood at 1.6 million hectares from 8.2 million hectares witnessed in 1900.
The Minister called for collective action by political parties, faith-based organizations, corporate bodies, schools, the media, diplomatic missions and all well-meaning Ghanaians to join forces to plant five million trees a day.