President William Ruto’s daughter Charlene Ruto continued with her charm offensive and whirlwind tours of counties by meeting Narok county officials, including governor Patrick Ole Ntutu.
The first daughter says she is on a mission to urge Kenyans to be part of the solutions to the dangerous levels of climate change which can be achieved through tree planting. She says tree planting can also be a source of youth employment through the development of Tree Nurseries throughout the country and youths given the mandate to run them.
Speaking after paying a courtesy call to governor Ntutu, Charlene conveyed her father’s message that calls on all citizens to own up tree-growing initiatives and plant 300 trees each in their respective farms in the next 5 years.
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Apart from tree planting Charlene, who is a Director at the Weston Hotel on Lang’ata Road, said she is on a tour of counties to hold talks with leaders and Kenyans centred on tourism, agriculture, youth empowerment and climate change.
PHOTO/George Sayagie
“For example, tree planting can be one source of creating employment among the youths who can be given the mandate to manage tree nurseries and let them sell seedlings to Kenyans,” she said.
Addressing the press alongside governor Ntutu, and flagged by county Assembly Speaker Davis Dikirr, Deputy governor Tamalinye Koech and a battery of MCAs led by assembly Majority leader Sonkoi Lemein, she called on Kenyans to embrace massive tree growing and help address the adverse effects of climate change in Kenya.
“We want to help the President and the whole world to tackle climate change and all issues that impact negatively on people's livelihood and the economy through our campaign,” said Charlene after she participated in a tree planting exercise at the Narok county headquarters.
To realize the required tree cover, she called on county governments to take tree planting seriously. She replicated president Ruto's call of planting 15 million trees in 10 years in their regions and especially by including tree planting in school programs.
Recently, the President said tree planting will save the country from the adverse effects of climate change. He said the move is in line with the goal of planting five million trees in the next five years.
Despite her tour of county governments eliciting conversation on social media as Kenyans expressed curiosity about the objective of the visits, Charlene has already held talks with top county officials in 12 counties including Embu, Kirinyaga, Isiolo, Kisumu, Bomet, Tharaka-Nithi, Narok and Kitui among others.
However, governor Ntutu who welcomed her to the county said he is already calling on the county assembly to help him set some development funds aside to target tree planting in schools.
“Our first venture is to target schools where every child plants three trees in their schools and waters them every day, but not until we secure the schools by fencing them since we have a lot of wildlife and livestock in our region that easily destroy the trees,” Ntutu stated.
