National Construction Industry Council (NCIC) has said it is working hard to find alternatives to baked bricks, especially in construction projects being implemented in rural areas.
NCIC Chief Executive Officer, Linda Phiri, said, currently 850,000 metric tonnes of wood are used annually for baking bricks, fuelling forest depletion and soil erosion. Phiri was speaking at Kasungu Primary School in Kasungu during a tree-planting exercise which NCIC conducted on Wednesday. She said priority number seven of the Construction Industry Policy focuses on cost-cutting measures and environmental management as one of the important issues. “In the construction industry, the timer that is used for roofing houses is still sourced from forests which contributes to the destruction of forests,” Phiri said.
At the event, NCIC also donated 2,000 seedlings to the district education office to be planted at the school. Kasungu District Forestry Officer, Henry Kagulo, said the district plans to plant 5,000 trees by the end of the tree-planting season. “Last season we planted about 4,900 trees and about 70 percent of the trees survived. Credit should go to community members who took the initiative to look after the trees,” Kagulo said.
(Source: The Daily Times, Friday, January 25, 2019)