Mrs Cecilia Abena Dapaah, the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, has called on Ghanaians to cultivate the habit of tree planting.

She said the changing climatic conditions and emerging threats to life on earth had imposed on mankind the need to embrace afforestation to preserve the ecology and biodiversity.

“It is the civic responsibility of every citizen to at least plant a tree, nurture and protect it because humanity is sustained by the environment, of which trees play a critical role,” she observed.

Mrs Dapaah, who was leading a tree planting exercise in the environs of the Owabi Dam, rallied the people to give their backing for the successful implementation of the ‘Green Ghana Project’ – which aims to improve the country’s lost forest cover.

She described the initiative as timely, citing its relevance to further developing the vegetative cover of the Owabi reservoir, the second major source of drinking water for those in the Greater Kumasi area.

On the exercise, a total of 120 species of tree seedlings were planted, ranging from mahogany, ofram, coconut, moringa, maliana, cedrela to soursop.

The exercise is to ensure the Dam holds the right volume of water for an uninterrupted supply to the people.

Mrs Dapaah said about 20 per cent of the water supplied to the Kumasi Metropolis alone was derived from the Owabi reservoir, which served mainly the northern part of the city.

She charged the officials of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), managers of the Dam, who also took part in the tree planting exercise, to supervise the growth of the various plant species.