Orange Sierra Leone, the biggest and widest mobile telecommunications company in Sierra Leone, in partnership with Youth Alliance and Initiative for Innovation and Environmental Development on Friday 5th May, 2023 ended the Environment, Health and Safety Week by planting 3000 trees at the mudslide site at Mortormeh Community, Regent.

The initiative of Orange SL in collaboration with its partner is geared towards reducing flooding risk on land or mudslide susceptibility in Mortormeh and Freetown at large.

The loss of these trees canopy have directly affected the catchment areas for water reserves, exacerbating the risk of landslides, flooding, and coastal erosion. The absence of trees and vegetation cover also threaten biodiversity.

Giving the overview of the week, the Public Relations Officer, Orange SL, Mabel Mason, intimated that last week was a week set aside annually as part of the company’s commitment towards preserving and ensuring they protect the environment from climate change.

She continued that the week was also set apart to raise awareness among their staff members, stakeholders and the county about the impact of damaging the environment and how that can drastically affect their operations as humans.

The PRO furthered that at the start of the week they were taken through by an Environment Protection Agency (EPA) representative on Environmental Health and Safety Week (EHSW) and a host of other engagements throughout the week.
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’This is a call to action for all, as long as you are a human being. The environment does not need us to survive, to succeed, to continue, we need the environment on the contrary. We cannot survive without the environment, but the environment can survive without you,” she noted.

Mabel Mason maintained that everyone has the responsibility to preserve the environment, do things that will encourage the continuation of human existence, and how they must not burn trees, and how if they cut down one tree, they must ensure that they plant ten more trees.

She furthered that people must ensure they dispose their refuse in the right place and must do all they can by preserving the environment.

According to her, by doing so; they are also preserving their own lives. National Olympic Committee President, Prince Sualley, commended the company for such a laudable venture, continuing that, they must ensure to protect the environment to prevent natural disasters like the mudslide that occurred in August 14th, 2017.

He stated that other companies or organizations should emulate such venture, stating how the environment needs to be preserved for human existence to continue.
Chief Lansana Kamara, the Residual Chief in the Mortomeh Community applauded the company for undertaking the tree planting exercise. He also lamented the death of the people who died in the mudslide.