?Af­ter sev­er­al years of ex­is­tence, Gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted yes­ter­day more than $2.7 mil­lion from the Green Fund to two com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Plan­ning, Hous­ing and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Dick-Forde pre­sent­ed cheques to­talling $1,914,806 and $852,281 to Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Group and Green­light Net­work, re­spec­tive­ly, for two projects. Fondes Aman­des will use the mon­ey to con­tin­ue its reaf­foresta­tion ini­tia­tive in the Fondes Aman­des wa­ter­shed in St Ann's.

The fund­ing is to com­plete the project with­in WASA's lands in the wa­ter­shed, up­grad­ing in­fra­struc­ture of the fa­cil­i­ties on the site and to con­tin­ue out­reach/ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties. And the Green­light Net­work's will use its funds to un­der­take a plas­tic re­cy­cling ini­tia­tive. It's the first project of the kind be­ing un­der­tak­en in T&T. Cit­i­zens will be able to dis­pose of their house­hold plas­tic waste in a man­ner that will en­sure pro­tec­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment.

Dick-Forde, in ad­dress­ing the cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, said leg­is­la­tion was ex­pect­ed to be amend­ed short­ly to al­low a larg­er num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty groups to ap­ply for grants un­der the Green Fund, which was es­tab­lished in 2004. The fund pro­vides grants to com­mu­ni­ty groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions for projects such as en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion, reaf­foresta­tion or re­me­di­a­tion.