Rwanda National Police (RNP) together with its partners plans to plant at least 50763 of trees across the country in the next two years as part of the implementation of the national afforestation programme.

The exercise also falls within the existing agreement between the force and the Ministry of Forestry signed in November last year to jointly partner to protect, conserve and develop lands and forestry.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Damas Gatare, the commissioner for Community Policing in RNP, said that 45803 hectares will constitute agro-forestry land while 4960 others will be on hilly and other forestry gazetted areas.

"Afforestation is also a human security factor, which the Police is actively part of to prevent disasters such as drought, landslides and soil erosion in particular, all of which pose threat to lives such as poverty and death in case of landslides,” ACP Gatare said.

As of the end of last year, 704,997 hectares of trees had been covered, representing only 29.6 percent of the total land allocated to forests in the country. Of this, majority 68 percent are manmade forests owned by people while national forests account for only 27 percent.

"Under the two-year afforestation programme, 14744 hectares will be planted in the Eastern Province, 8415 hectares in the northern, 9484 hectares in western, 26035 hectares in southern and 2085 in the City of Kigali,” ACP Gatare said.

"This is an exercise we will conduct with our partners including the Ministry of Forestry, Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA), districts, youth volunteers in community policing, and the public in general,” he said.

RNP signed in 2015, an agreement with each of the 30 districts partly to join efforts in environmental protection and promotion programmes, including afforestation activities.

Following the signing of the agreement with the Ministry of Forestry in November last year, Police and youth volunteers planted over 125, 500 trees in different parts of the country.

This is in addition to about 300 hectares the force planted in different parts of the country over the past years.

Meanwhile, the youth volunteers group, which has over 230,000 members countrywide, allocated every second Saturday of the month their special communal work– Umuganda – exercise part of which they will be involved in environmental protection activities, including tree planting.