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{
    "id": 1271934,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1271934/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 59,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Soipan Tuya",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forestry",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 926,
        "legal_name": "Roselinda Soipan Tuya",
        "slug": "roselinda-soipan-tuya"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir and Hon. Senator for your question. Yes, schools are one of the major stakeholders in the tree growing initiative. That is where we have free labour from our children; not labour in the street sense of it. Recently, through the Cabinet, we got approval for an institutionalisation plan to institutionalise tree growing within the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) programme in our schools. This will allow a value system developed in our children right from the tender age of school. They shall take environmental conservation and eco- system protection as a core value as they grow up. Mr. Speaker, Sir, in response to the Senator, we have identified 20,000 schools where we are doing pilot programmes with in terms of tree nursery propagation. One of the challenges we are facing right now is availability of seedlings to meet our annual targets for 1.5 billion trees annually. This eventually translates to 15 billion in 10 years. Indeed, I have had engagements with the Committee on Education in the National Assembly. This is jointly with the National Government-Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) Committee. We had targeted asks for the National Assembly to feed into our tree growing initiative. One of which is to review the NG-CDF law and increase the allocation for environmental protection from two to five per cent. One of the programmes that we have within our strategy is to employ up to 100,000 young men; by the name “green army”. Through the NG-CDF projects, we would want the Members of the National Assembly to engage labour in form of the green army in line with what the Ministry is coming up with. In terms of engagement with the Committee of the Senate; I just confirmed with my liaison officer that we do not have any official letter or request for engagement. However, that is not to say that we have no intention or plans to engage with the Senate Standing Committee on Education. Hon. Senator, we started of with the review and amendment processes within the National Assembly. We have no way of achieving our strategy with the schools without engaging the Senate. I can undertake that we are going to extend that collaboration with the Senate Committee of Education beyond our line Committee on Land, Environment and Natural Resources. I thank you."
}