NWSC Campaign Targets to Plant a Million Trees by 2018

National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has launched a nationwide tree planting campaign as a way of protecting the environment.

The drive dubbed ‘Plant a Tree Save the Future’ is an initiative of the NWSC Young water professionals (YWPs) and will encourage staff, the youth, school going children through the NWSC School Water and Sanitation Clubs to collectively plant at least one million trees within one year as a means of promoting environmental conservation and catchment protection.

The Corporation believes that protecting the catchments provides a significant ‘natural’ barrier to contamination and yields high quality water.

Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga during the launch on Wednesday thanked NWSC for the campaign which she said is in line with the nationwide tree planting campaign launched in April 2014 by government.

The Speaker requested the management and staff of NWSC to take the initiative to continue monitoring the trees for sustainability purposes.

She called on other organizations to take up tree planting as a priority to manage the current climate change challenges

The Managing Director of NWSC Dr. Eng Silver Mugisha noted that NWSC through the YWPs has been able to plant more than 15,000 trees both in Kampala and Other service Areas, and intends to continue with the tree planting exercise

NWSC is in a phase of accelerated service delivery that has seen the organisation expand its service coverage from 24 towns in 2014 to 218 towns as at September 2017.

Having expanded its service footprint from 24 to 208 towns in the last four years, NWSC and government have rolled out a project to connect water to 12,000 villages by 2020 within NWSC operational areas.

The national goal of Uganda’s water supply and sanitation sector is to increase urban and rural access to water supply services from 77% and 65% respectively to 100% and 79% by 2020.

The Young Water Professionals (YWPs) is a group of young vibrant men and women with a passion for water, sanitation and the environment working towards promoting catchment protection and environmental conservation.