MESPT partners to celebrate World Environment Day in Nakuru County

MESPT in partnership with Nakuru County and the National Environmental Management Agency (NEMA) chose to commemorate the World Environment Day 2021 on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th June 2021.

On Friday 4th June, a tree planting drive to plant 1,000 trees at the Nakuru East Primary School & Nakuru Agriculture Training Centre (ATC) went on as a precursor event to the Free Area market clean-up scheduled for Saturday 5th June which is the World Environment Day.

Speaking during the exercise, Environment Chief Officer Kiogora Murithi noted that tree planting is a great step towards reclaiming the position of Nakuru as the cleanest town and now city to be.

The World Environment Day 2021 theme was ‘ecosystem restoration’ with the focus on restoring our relationship with nature. The traders and other operators in the busy Free Area market joined in the exercise which will benefit them with a clean and green environment. The market clean-up is of health benefit to the community and involved picking litter/contaminants, waste incineration & collection, slashing of grass, cleaning & opening drainage etc. to destroy breeding sites that could attract mosquitoes and pathogens which can cause diseases and contamination.

“We cannot talk about a city if our environment is not clean and in a sustainable state,” said Mr Kiogora. He added that there was need to identify the sources of pollution especially to rivers such as Ngosur that drain their water into Lake Nakuru which serves as a water reserve for wild animals in the park.

Doreen Kinoti, GEAP Manager noted that the clean-up drive is in line with MESPT’s agenda to strengthen food safety measures and standards as well as drum up food safety awareness, proper waste management by food business operators and consumers. Additionally, she said that the Trust is keen on Green Transformation which entails promotion of inclusive green growth and effectively reconciling economic development with environmental and social sustainability with great emphasis on value chains greening, waste management, green technologies uptake & adoption, natural resource management for a portfolio of greener projects.

The World Environment Day celebrations were supported by MESPT through 2 of its programmes namely GEAP and AgriFI which are funded by DANIDA and the European Union. Several cleaning tools were donated to the Nakuru County Environment team that include Plastic Litter Bins, Wheelbarrows, Garbage Polythene Bags, Dustcoats, Overalls, N95 Masks, Gloves, Gumboots, Hard Brooms, Spades, Rakes, Jembes, Folks and Helmets.

MESPT’s AgriFI food safety programme is supporting Nakuru and Nyandarua Counties to set up model wet markets based on the premise that foodborne diseases affect human health and cause significant economic loss hence the mitigation of future epidemics like COVID 19. The model wet markets will have improved food safety measures without harming food and economic security of the ones who depend on them. Additionally, to prevent or at least, to reduce foodborne diseases AgriFI is supporting 13 counties through enactment and proper enforcement of food legislation.

The Green Employment in Agriculture Programme (GEAP) on the other hand is supporting a holistic approach towards food safety through reliance on market-driven incentives for uptake of food safety initiatives. Additionally, the programme is keen on Green Transformation.