Kumasi to become Garden City once again
The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has launched a programme to recover its lost image as the ‘Garden City of West Africa’.
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Under the programme, dubbed, “Kumasi Urban Forestry Project: Me and my tree’’, the city authorities are to plant over one million trees by the year 2017 to replace the green vegetation that has been lost.
The tree planting exercise will be carried out along some selected principal routes, on school compounds and in open spaces in the metropolis.
Prior to the official launch of the programme, about 171 trees had been planted.
The Kumasi Urban Forestry Project marks the beginning of the ‘green revolution’ dream of the KMA.
The programme is an initiative of the KMA and the Institute of Renewable Natural Resources (IRNR) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Forest Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG).
To ensure the exercise becomes successful, schoolchildren will be given seedlings to plant and nurture after which the schools that do well will be rewarded for their hard work.
At the launch of the programme, the Metropolitan Chief Executive of Kumasi, Mr Kojo Bonsu, called on all residents to support the project to make it a success because the benefits of having trees in abundance were enormous.
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He commended various interest groups for the interest shown in the programme and called on companies in the country to come on board to assist the city regain its past glory as the garden city of West Africa.
“The project could not have come at a more appropriate time than this considering the current rapid rate of environmental degradation, we should as such endeavour to act on time to save the environment,” he said.
The Amakomhene, Nana Adu Mensah Asare, who chaired the ceremony, enumerated the benefits that accrued from availability of trees and called for the planted trees to be protected till they grew.
The Regional Manager of Out Stations for the Bank of Africa, Madam Haleema Akyirem, pledged the bank’s support for the programme with 100 tree seedlings.
Other companies, including Melcom Ghana Ltd, the Bank of Ghana and GTZ, an international agency of the German Federal Government, also pledged to provide quantities of seedlings towards the sustenance of the exercise.