The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has written to Finance Minister Matia Kasaija, seeking explanations on the wanton cross-border trade in charcoal.<\/p>\n
Kadaga said Kenya and Rwanda remain a major destination for locally burnt charcoal, worsening Uganda\u2019s environmental crisis.<\/p>\n
At a function dubbed \u2018Greening Busoga Programme\u2019 in Luuka, Kadaga said she wrote to Kasaija seeking an explanation on the trade, which she says continues unabated.<\/p>\n
\u201cCharcoal is transported from here to Kenya and Rwanda through our borders. I wrote to the Finance Minister about the charcoal trade,\u201d said Kadaga.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Greening Busoga Programme\u2019 is an initiative of Youth Go Green, a coalition of youths driving the environment conservation agenda.<\/p>\n
The Speaker said instead of engaging in idling and charcoal burning, which destroys the environment, the youth can trade in tree planting for profit.<\/p>\n
MP Stephen Mukisa said whereas government has constructed schools, children are engaged in sugarcane harvesting and charcoal burning, which is destroying their future.<\/p>\n
\u201cFifty per cent of children are harvesting sugarcane, growing rice and burning charcoal; they have since abandoned school,\u201d said Mukisa.<\/p>\n
The Minister in Charge of the Presidency, also the area Woman MP, Esther Mbayo, cautioned parents against negligence, saying failure to take children to school will attract severe sanctions.<\/p>\n
A 2016 report on the State of Uganda\u2019s Environment published by the Ministry of Water and Environment spells doom for Uganda\u2019s forest cover.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe forest estate has shrunk from 24 per cent of the total land area in 1990 to nine per cent in 2015. In terms of acreage, a total of 3.05 million hectares were lost in a span of 25 years. Out of this loss about 2.2 million hectares were from the woodlands,\u201d reads the report in part.<\/p>\n
Parliamentary News<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has written to Finance Minister Matia Kasaija, seeking explanations on the wanton cross-border trade in charcoal. Kadaga said Kenya and Rwanda remain a major destination for locally burnt charcoal, worsening Uganda\u2019s environmental crisis. At a function dubbed \u2018Greening Busoga Programme\u2019 in Luuka, Kadaga said she wrote to Kasaija seeking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":5095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5096,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions\/5096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}