The Rotary Club of Lauto­ka and Ministry of Forest­ry personnel have joined hands to protect communities in the Sugar City from the effects of climate change.

The club’s president, Chirag Parmar, led his 14-member team to the Natabua seaside shoreline in Lautoka on Saturday to join ministry staff plant 4100 man­grove saplings.

Mr Parmar said the club’s focus this year was to be at the frontline protecting communities in the Lautoka area and ensuring a safe future. He said climate change continued to be a threat to the na­tion and taking steps now to pro­tect Fiji was on the club’s agenda.

“Usually, the month of Septem­ber is dedicated to world clean up, but apart from that, Rotary has seven focus areas so the environ­ment was recently added just last year so this year we decided that we will focus a lot more on the en­vironment projects,” Mr Parmar said.

“This is one of the several that we plan to do and I have had pre­vious experiences working with the ministry as well.”

He said the task was an impor­tant one because it portrayed the phrase ‘giving back to communi­ties’.

“Also, a significant area of fo­cus is climate change and world measures which are taking over our environment,” he said.

Forest guard, Leveni Duvudu­vukula said the ministry’s target this year was to plant 33,000 man­groves along the coastal areas in the Western Division.

Natabua Seaside resident, Peter Chongsue said he was confident the 100 plus residents in the com­munity would now be protected.

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