Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) says it is making progress in its efforts to conserve tree cover along Lilongwe River, which happens to be its catchment area.
One of the board members at LWB, Lingalireni Mihowa, made these sentiments during a tree planting exercise which they had jointly with Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) at Malingunde in Lilongwe.
Mihowa said as part of reducing water pollution which mostly affects their clients, they are working with communities around Kamuzu dam 1 and 2 in Malingunde in replanting trees so that they can preserve thier catchment area of Lilongwe river.
“We are doing many activities interms of working with schools and also community based organizations that are involved in briquette making as one way of taking them off the pressure that could have on the forest cover by cutting down the trees and we have been on this exercise over a year now and the reports that the board is getting is that many families are now complementing to our efforts as most of them are now using briquettes rather than charcoal,” Mihowa said.
On his part MHC board chairperson Reverend Jaleck Kachiwanda said as a key player in construction that also uses alot of trees in form of timber they thought it wise to partner in this exercise.
“We have put measures to make sure that we are monitoring these trees as traditional in Malawi we do plant trees but we fail to take care, so with water board we will make sure we do regular visits to see how many have survived and if there is no progress we are going to put some measures to make sure that we are safe guardian these trees,” he said.
Deputy minister of water and sanitation Liana Chapota said it is very commendable that Water Boards should be on the forefront in planting trees in order to cover their catchment areas for potable water at all times throughout the year.
“Their should be well collaborated efforts between boards and communities to make sure that when these trees have been planted they should survive because their is great relationship between trees and water resources as they give good vegetative cover and when we talk of water sustainablity we need to plant more trees to have good water resources,” Chapota said.
LWB is supporting 120 community nurseries with 400, 000 tree seedlings working together with schools as well as community based organization and during the exercise on this day they planted 6,300 tree seedlings.
