First Lady Dr. Mrs. Naadu Mills has lauded MTN Ghana for using their 21 Days Yello Care this year to plant 15,770 trees across the country. She said the environmental enhancement projects undertaken during the 21 Days Yello Care were worthy investments that demonstrated MTN’s brand equity. “Through the planting of over 15,000 seedlings of different species throughout the country MTN has made a practical commitment towards the greening Ghana campaign embarked upon by the government to combat the effect of desertification,” she observed The First Lady was speaking at a ceremony to bring down the curtains on the award-winning MTN Ghana 21 Days Yello Care, which focused on environmental protection and saw 81 per cent of MTN Ghana staff planting trees, cleaning beaches, painting public hospitals, talks on environmental protection in schools and special quiz competitions on environmental issues. Mrs. Naadu Mills expressed the hope that with the immense work MTN Ghana had done over the 21 Days of Yello Care, she had no doubt that the Ghana operation would once again emerge winners of the Yello Care challenge this year among the group of 21. She also commended MTN Ghana for its investment in various corporate social responsibility projects such as the refurbishment of second floor of Korle-Bu Maternity Block, water and sanitation projects in the Upper West Region, and the construction of a three classroom block at Sefwi Abono among other things. The First Lady called for a carefully designed maintenance plan to ensure the sustainability of MTN’s social responsibility projects so the public could reap the full benefits thereof. “These thoughtfully selected avenues of volunteerism will undoubtedly contribute in no small way to our national development and must be sustained,” she said. MTN Ghana Chief Executive Officer Michael Ikpoki recalled that the theme for this year’s 21 Days Yello Care was “Our Environment, Our future” which was in line with the United Nation’s declaration of year 2011 as the year of aforestation. He said the MTN Group tasked all 21 MTN operations to grow 1,000 trees each but MTN Ghana decided to grow 9,000 instead in line with its nine million customers. “In the end we planted 15,770 trees and that has pushed the MTN group to now mandate each of the 21 operations to plain an additional 7,500 trees each to make 150,000 trees in line with the group’s 150 million subscribers,” he said. He noted that the watchword for MTN Ghana was to “grow” trees and not just to plant them, so MTN and its partners have designed programmes to ensure that the seedlings planted would grow into trees to benefits the respective communities and the nation as whole. Mr. Ikpoki said he had no doubt that when the MTN Group meets to reward countries for their Yello Care achievements in October this year, Ghana would emerge the best again as it did last year. MTN Ghana Foundation Coordinator, Frazier Malcolm told Adom News that the MTN has received several requests and parcels of land to plant more than 60,000 trees in various parts of the country so they would be embarking on that project soon. “When we won the Best Yello Care Activity last year we were given $100,000 dollars to undertake social projects so we will be using that money to plant more trees and also sustain what we have planted till they grow and become beneficial to the environment,” he said. He said from now on, every Yello Care activity in the coming years would include projects geared at sustaining the trees planted and we also have monthly, quarterly and yearly programmes to ensure that trees reached full maturity. MTN Ghana spent about GHC45,000 planting the seedlings this year, and Mr. Malcolm said they would be spending more than that in ensuring the sustainability and full maturity of the tree. Story by: Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana