PALAYAN CITY – The pains of climbing mountains did not bar graduate school students from a private university in Cabanatuan City to plant trees on top of the mountainous village here over the weekend.
Most of them are already of “good age” that climbing heights can be considered a great sacrifice, but just the same they did what they sought to do.
Dr. Lulu Diamante, dean of Phinma- Araullo University graduate school, said that students taking masteral and doctoral courses, planted about 200 trees on the mountain top of Sitio Bacao, an identified reforestation area under President Benigno S. Aquino’s National Greening Program (NGP).
Diamante explained that the department has adopted a specific area in the adjacent sitio (sub-village) of Alorma, also in Barangay Doña Josefa, but they have finished planting there as certified by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
“Our students who planted here are mostly (school) principals and chiefs of different offices,” Diamante said.
This, she added, invites the possibility of the virtue of caring for the environment emulated.
“Today, we have the principals practicing this good activity, in the future they are encouraging their own students or employees doing the same,” she said.
Diamante admitted that some students complained of pains but continued doing their task. Some of them were heard asking for pain reliever.
Engr. Jose Ariel Domingo, immediate past president of the graduate school’s students’ organization and manager of the National Irrigation Administration-Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System’s division IV, said they conduct a series of tree planting activities in accordance with Aquino’s vision to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares by 2016.
“We adhere to the President’s order and his vision to make our country a better world for the future generations,” Domingo said.
Domingo said that he himself has enjoined NIA employees under Division IV to come up with the 10 trees per person per year policy.
“We identified the watershed of Aulo Dam in Palayan City as our reforestation area,” he said. The place, he added, has been placed under the DENR’s NGP areas.
Diamante said their students will continue to conduct tree planting activities even as the university exerts efforts to instill in the youth the care for the environment.
