Ruto asks all police recruits to plant 30 trees each in one month
President William Ruto has asked all police recruits who have completed their passing out this week to take time to plant at least 30 trees each during their one-month break.
The recruits include 1,998 Administrative Police and 2,881 police constables who have graduated from police colleges.
The president also called upon all security agencies working in Nairobi to plant over 30 million trees to support his project of greening the capital.
He spoke on Wednesday when he presided over the 58th Administration Police Passing out Parade at the National Police College Embakasi A Campus.
Ruto directed Kenya Forest Service to provide seedlings to the security arms of the government to aid the county in changing the landscape of Nairobi.
“I am asking each one of you to plant at least 30 trees each,” said the President.
He added, “I have asked the commandant of this campus (Embakasi A) and the one at the GSU campus and all those working in our security here in Nairobi to plant 30 million trees.”
On Tuesday, January 10, Ruto presided over the passing out of police constables recruits at National Police College-Main Campus, Kiganjo.
Cumulatively, more than 5,000 police graduates will be released this week to serve after a nine-month of training at various National Police Service training colleges. If they all follow through on the president’s directive, the country could see another 150,000 trees planted over the next month.
The President has already announced a plan to plant 15 billion trees by 2032.
During his birthday on December 21, Ruto planted 56 trees to mark his 56th birthday at Ngong Hills Forest, as other counties held similar functions that saw a total of 560,000 trees planted.
“To a considerable extent, these adversities are the direct and indirect consequences of human failure to observe its ecological imperative. Instead of preserving the integrity of the planet’s vital systems to enhance the earth’s livability for all of creation, we have embarked on thoughtless exploitation and the insidious pursuit of prosperity in ways that do not take environmental costs into account,” he said.
“70 percent of Kenya’s livestock and 90 percent of our wild game inhabit our rangelands. At the same time, over 90 percent of the country’s landscapes are, regrettably, undergoing one form of degradation or another. Of these endangered landscapes, 61 percent face high-intensity degradation, while 27 percent are under severe degradation,” he added.