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{
    "id": 769599,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/769599/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 45,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ng’ongo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "The problem is not about planting of trees, but protecting our forests. I was discussing with my friends here and we tend to agree that a lot of environment conservation is a devolved function. However, if you do it in places like schools, that is still the national Government function. The gazetted forests in this country are a national Government function. We have enough gazetted forests in this country. We are failing in planting trees in those forests and protecting them. In fact, I want to encourage the committee which will look into this matter to go a step further and ask the employees that we are paying every month as forest warders and people who are supposed to protect forests whether they are doing their work. For example, if you come to my constituency, I have one of the biggest forest covers in this country. I have the Gwassi Forest or Gwassi Hills. When I was growing up, the people who protected forests used to have their offices and residences inside the forest. Nowadays, you find a forest officer living 20 kilometres away from the forest that he is supposed to protect. How would one protect a forest from 20 kilometres away? They hardly visit those forests in the first place. They wait for people who have burnt charcoal and arrest them in market centres and claim to be protecting forest cover. When they arrest them, they never reach the courts. They arrest them, get bribed and then they let them go. So, it is a double jeopardy for our people. First, the forest is being destroyed. Secondly, out of ignorance and poverty, our people have burnt trees to get charcoal and then get money. They are again fleeced and they even get poorer."
}