Saccos plants tree to restore members’ income

EVANGELICAL Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) Northern Diocese Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (ELCT-ND Saccos) in Kilimanjaro has embarked on a tree planting campaign to fight drought that has affected its members.

The ELCT ND Saccos’ Projects and Marketing Officer, Mr Jeremiah Chaki, said on Wednesday that drought has affected its members negatively in terms of income and ability to pay back their loans.

Mr Chaki noted that farmers failed to harvest enough crops and herders lost their livestock due to drought and failed to repay their loans.

“ELCT-ND Saccos has over 14,000 members inside and outside Kilimanjaro; most of them are farmers and herders who suffered due to extreme drought,” he said during an exercise of planting 600 trees in Hai district.

He said failure to service their loans is affecting the operation of the ELCT ND Saccos that was why they joined the government initiative to improve the environment by planting trees while fighting climate change.

Mr Chaki said that to begin with the organisation planted 600 trees in Hai while aiming to make the exercise sustainable by doing it every year in various parts of the country whenever necessary.

Speaking at the tree planting event held at the Nkwariruta water source in Mroma village in Hai, the representative of Pangani Basin Water Board (PBWB), Engineer Suleiman Mdee, thumbed the Saccos initiative which compliments the government’s efforts meant to preserve the environment.

“PBWB, which is one of the custodians of water sources in the country, promises to unite with all the stakeholders who have come forward to support the tree-planting campaign,” he said.

Chairman of Kware River Water Users Association in Hai, Mr Wilfred Massawe, challenged the residents to cultivate a habit of conserving water sources due to their significance on human life.

“Water sources are the basis of everything related to human life, including water for agriculture and all other important uses, so it is good that we build a habit of protecting them and also plant trees that will contribute to the sustainability of those sources”, he noted.