Khara Per­sad

Earth Day is about more than dis­trib­ut­ing seedlings to passers-by at a busy junc­tion; but even that is a pos­i­tive step.

The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit com­mem­o­rat­ed Earth Day by dis­trib­ut­ing small plants to ea­ger res­i­dents and trav­ellers at Curepe junc­tion on April 22.

"The pur­pose of this is to bring aware­ness to Earth Day," said Khadi­jah Ameen, chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion, while hand­ing out plants to stu­dents.

"To­day our dis­as­ter unit co-or­di­nat­ed with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and they pro­vid­ed the trees and we want­ed to dis­trib­ute it to the pub­lic just to bring aware­ness."

She said it is im­por­tant that the cor­po­ra­tion part­ners with the pub­lic to re­al­ly make an im­pact in im­prov­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

Rishi Siew, the unit co-or­di­na­tor, talked about their long-term plans for re­plant­i­ng the coun­try, "We're look­ing at ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­op­ing the forestry of T&T, be­cause last dry sea­son was dev­as­tat­ing. We're look­ing at re­plant­i­ng via the tree-plant­i­ng ex­er­cise and the tree-plant dis­tri­b­u­tion."

Siew hopes the plants will grow and be a source of of sus­te­nance to those who took them. "This is sort of a long-term in­vest­ment in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and back in­to the coun­try.

"They are tak­ing plants away to go home and re­plant them."

Ameen was im­pressed with the turnout, say­ing the 300 plants dis­ap­peared with­in 30 min­utes. It was the first year the cor­po­ra­tion dis­trib­uted plants, in­clud­ing bal­a­ta, ma­hogany, se­ries, bay leaf and chataigne.

Among the par­tic­i­pants were stu­dents from Hillview Col­lege, Tu­na­puna, who were ex­cit­ed to be part of the ex­er­cise.

"It was fun to come out and help," said one stu­dent.

His ge­og­ra­phy teacher Yema Jaikaran com­mend­ed the cor­po­ra­tion's ef­forts. "I think tar­get­ing the pop­u­la­tion at a cen­tral point like this can be ben­e­fi­cial be­cause you reach a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple," she said.

"In terms of agro-forestry it's a good dri­ve, be­cause peo­ple can be more self-suf­fi­cient in that re­gard."

She stressed, how­ev­er, that peo­ple need to be ed­u­cat­ed about the coun­try's low veg­e­ta­tion and be more proac­tive, but not just at home.

"I think peo­ple will plant them at home, but maybe that's not nec­es­sar­i­ly where we need them. So the dri­ve we need to fo­cus on is get­ting peo­ple to come out and go in­to the hill­side it­self, see what's hap­pen­ing, and have re­for­esta­tion of the hills," Jaikaran said.