Semiliguda: A long-cherished dream of tribal inhabitants of Bilaput, a hill-locked village under Lamtaput block in Koraput district, to have access to electricity has finally come true.
A local NGO has set up a project in the village to generate electricity that too from firewood collected from forests.
Significantly, the power will not only illuminate houses of the residents, but also help in running a few small scale and cottage industries, it was learnt.
Pottangi MLA Prafulla Pangi inaugurated the project last week. Sunil Dhingra of The Energy Research Institute (TERI), a Delhi-based organisation, who offered technical know-how on the project, was also present on the occasion along with some officials of the revenue department.
According to reports, Kasturba Mahasangh, a confederation of nearly 30 local women self help groups (SHGs), having 330 members, had been formed in 2006 to make the women self-reliant.
The members of the group used to collect cashew nuts from nearby forests and sell them to local traders. The women knew that they were deprived of their dues.
So, they decided to process the cashew instead of selling directly to make the product profitable.
However, the region was not connected with electricity which was a major hurdle for the group in setting up a cashew processing unit.
They didn’t lose hope and set up a unit at Bilaput in 2012 after managing to connect the area with electricity. To their disappointment, the voltage was not adequate to run the unit.
Meanwhile, Spread, a local NGO, extended its helping hand. It took the initiative to set up a biomass gasifier plant, to convert solid fuel into energy, with the help of TERI.
The construction of the unit began in 2014. The unit now produces 25 kilowatt of electricity a day from firewood.
Apart from cashew, the plant also supplies power to run paddy and raggi processing units in the village. Besides, it can meet the energy needs of four panchayats in the block, officials said.
“Production of electricity from wood was beyond our dream,” the excited villagers said. Hundreds of women of the panchayats are hopeful of becoming self-reliant due to this energy plant. PNN
