The Ashanti Regional Minister, Dr. Samuel Sarpong, and the Mayor of Kumasi, Kojo Bonsu, last Saturday, led volunteers and a section of residents of Kumasi to embark on a tree-planting exercise in the metropolis. Staff of Access Bank donned their corporate blue T-shirts and joined the exercise at Oforikrom.

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) is to plant 1,000,000 trees along driveways, open spaces and in some selected school compounds by the year 2017, under its Greening Kumasi project, to ensure that the past glory of the city is restored to halt the degradation of the environment through Urban Forestry Project.

The driveways considered for the exercise included Asokwa Oforikrom bypass, Adum, Anloga Roundabout, Krofrom traffic lights and Suame roundabout.

Minister Sarpong indicated that trees in urban areas improve the air quality through collection of particular pollutants as pollen, ash, dust, smoke in their canopy, and sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide among others, and urged the residents to sustain the exercise

He said: “Trees are medicinal. They repel poisonous carbon dioxide from our environment,” and that trees are beneficial to everyone, as a result of which there is the need to protect our trees in the once Garden City of West Africa.

He hoped that school children, the youth, and general public and residents within the Kumasi metropolitan area would take pride in Kumasi’s rich heritage and legacy, and strive to preserve this.

According to him, the project would afford the school children the opportunity to rehabilitate and beautify their school compounds and community, while learning valuable environmental issues through the tree planting exercise.