THE Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office (Union and E n v i r o n m e n t ) , Mussa Azzan Zungu, has called for concerted efforts in planting trees and finding alternative sources of cooking energy to conserve the environment as climate change effects continue to threaten livelihoods.
Minister Zungu made the call yesterday in Dar es Salaam as when he inaugurated a tree planting campaign for Dar es Salaam region, an event that went hand in hand with planting 50 thousand trees.
The minister said reliance on charcoal and firewood as sources of cooking energy had severe detrimental effects on the environment, especially the country’s forest and human livelihoods in general. “Research projects that Dar es Salaam city will have more than 10 million people in seven years to come.
This population projection also estimates carbon dioxide gas emission to reach more that 46 million tones in Tanzania by the year 2030. The youth who have already shown excitement in conserving trees must do more to rescue the situation,” he said.
The minister said that apart from the projects which are already in place and spearheaded by the youth to conserve environment, the youth have also shown their readiness to plant trees in various places of the city and innovate ways of enabling everyone to access cooking gas at affordable prices.
“I urge cooking gas traders to consider lowering prices to accommodate a large number of customers who still rely on wood fuel, which has serious negative consequences in regard to environmental conservation,” he said. Speaking at the same event, the inventor of KopaGas technology, Mr Andron Mendes said that his aim was to facilitate affordability and simplified ways of access to gas energy to people from all walks of life.
“KopaGas technology promotes an all-inclusive mode in access to cooking gas gauged by meters, where users can purchase cooking gas at a cheap price through a network monitored meter,” said the inventor.
Earlier, while welcoming the minister, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Acceleration of Life Skills Foundation (ALSF), Dr Michal Mawondo, advised the government to consider waiving tax on alternative clean energy sources for conserving the environment.
“The government should facilitate short and long courses on environmental conservation techniques and consider waiving tax on gas as a way of promoting affordability,”
