Kampala, August 2, 2023 – The National Forestry Authority has on Wednesday commissioned a fleet of vehicles and Motorcycles for management of the reserves in the country.
Presiding over the launch, the Executive Director NFA Mr. Tom Obong Okello said the five vehicles were procured with Government of Uganda funds, twenty-eight (28) motorcycles procured under the Investing in Forests and Protected Areas for Climate Smart Development project supported by the World Bank, two (2) motorcycles were procured with support from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, seven (7) motorcycles procured under the Biodiversity for Resilience project specifically to be used in the Kidepo landscape in Karamoja, and five (5) Motorcycles procured by Government of Uganda.
The officials also commissioned Ten (10) Laptops, fourteen (14) Global Positioning System equipment, one (1) Arial Manned Vehicle (Drone) and one Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) machine.
‘’ These new vehicles and motorcycles will greatly ease our staff mobility and enhance capacity to patrol, monitor the forest reserves and implement other forestry activities thus achieving NFA’s strategic objective of improving management of central forest reserves’’, noted Obong.
This investment is worth Uganda shillings One billion six hundred sixty-one million four hundred twenty-nine thousand three hundred eighty only (Ugx 1,661,429,380).
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‘’As a country, in the National Development Plan III 2020-2025 we have a target to increase land area covered by forests from 9.1 percent to 15 percent by 2025 and we are currently at 13.4% and with such enabling factors like easing mobility to protect, restore and establish forests we are moving in the right direction to achieve this target’’, added Obong.
The NFA Board Chairman. Eng.Christopher Ebal noted that the environment is currently under threat from various activities that are being undertaken by mankind yet people rely on the environment for livelihood.
Ebal appealed to Ugandans to plant more trees, saying the trees are important in mitigating the effects of climate change.
National Forestry Authority has always committed itself to sustainable development and management of the Central Forest Reserves (CFRs) and provision of technical support to stakeholders in the forestry sub-sector.
