National Construction Industry Council (NCIC) suspended 27 projects whose contractors were not complying with the environmental risk policy in the last three months of 2022.

NCIC chief executive officer Engineer Gerald Khonje revealed this during the council’s tree planting exercise at Mbeza community in T/A Msakambewa in Dowa on Friday.

Engineer Khonje (R) and Midiani plant a treethat

He said the suspension orders are given to non-complying contractors as a first step in the disciplinary process to ensure sanity in the construction industry.

“The industry is growing everyday which means the demand for environmental based resources such as trees is growing also. If we let them operate anyhow, then we are doing injustice to the environment,” said Khonje.

The policy among key issues demands that contractors minimise the number of trees they cut down within their construction site, take part in tree-planting and maximise the use of environmental friendly materials such as cement blocks and rocks.

He said when a contract has been suspended, the council monitors to see if the identified challenges have been rectified then but where a contractor proves adamant, the worst punishment is deletion from the contractors database.

“Out of the 27 contracts which we ordered to stop in the last quarter of 2022, 17 rectified their problems and we allowed them to continue but we are still monitoring the remaining 10,” added Khonje.

He said it is disheartening that some contractors cut down trees even where the actual construction will not pass thereby contributing to desertification of places which catalyses effects of climate change.

Dowa district plantation manager Yamiko Midiani said they are targeting to plant 1 million trees during this tree planting season.

However, he said there is need for companies and organisations which support communities in tree planting to also invest in programmes that will promote tree survival rather than concentrating on planting alone.

“If we don’t invest in protecting the trees, we will keep on wasting resources by planting trees every year and yet there will be no change. Our aim is to replace tree cover so we need a multi-approach,” said Midiani.

Senior group village head Mbeza said his subjects have formed forest reserve committees which lead in the afforestation and protection of forests.

He said the committees are also responsible for enforcing forest protection by-laws which the chiefs and their community members.

The post NCIC suspends 27 projects over environmental risk policy first appeared on The Nation Online.

The post NCIC suspends 27 projects over environmental risk policy appeared first on The Nation Online.