A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Growing Tree Network Ghana, on Monday begun a four-day tree Planting exercise in four communities within the base of Mountain Afadjato in the Volta Region.

The tree Planting exercise which begun on Monday through to Thursday in Gbledi Chebi, Gbledi Dzigbodi, Gbledi Toglo and Gbledi Agumatsa were supervised by The Project Manager Mr Christopher Boatin with 3,318 Planting seedlings to cover areas that were destroyed by Chainsaw Operators.

The Planting seeds comprised; 1,750 fruit trees, 1,000 medicinal tree plants, and 568 forest trees.

Some planting materials were supplied to the Gbledi Gbogame Primary/JHS and Gbledi Gbogame Health Centre.

Mr Boatin was surprise during the Planting when he noticed that, the farmers were planting the trees with their families, Chainsaw Operators while people were cutting down trees from Mountain Afadjato and said he was so disappointed with the exercise.

Mr Christopher Boatin later drew the attention of the destruction of the forest to the Paramount Chief of Gbledi Gbogame, Torgbegah Homatekpor.

Torgbegah replied that although there were strict instructions that no one should enter the forest to cut trees, they waited when he travelled out of town to cut down the trees.

As a result of this, Torgbegah organized an emergency meeting with the Chainsaw Operators on Wednesday morning warning perpetrators that whoever may be arrested would be fined heavily and also plant 10 forest trees for every tree cut.

This project according to Mr Boatin was sponsored by Grow a Tree Network Ghana.

A few items like flyers on importance of trees were distributed, while other incentives like raincoats, wellington boots, cutlasses, hand sanitizers, nose masks and maize seeds were given out to the farmers.

Earlier projects that had some tree seedlings planted in September 2021, were revisited to see how they were performing.