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Biogas a boon for rural Kailali folk
KAILALI, APR 14 -
Village life is hard, especially for housewives and mothers. This is more so when the family is large. Laxmi Devi Chaudhary, 38, of Ramshikharjhala-9, Kailali, has a first-hand experience of such tough life.
With 22 members to feed and look after, she used to spend most of her time preparing food, and her major concern was to find firewood for cooking. However, it was a common problem of all the villagers.
“Firewood, the only source of fuel then, was scarce and the villagers used to compete to collect as much firewood as possible,” Chaudhary recalls her days five years ago. But life has become easier with the installation of a biogas plant in her house three years ago. Biogas plant provides a clean and renewable source of energy from organic waste materials like animal dung.
Chaudhary is the Vice President of Fulbari Community Forest Users’ Group (FCFUG) of Ramshikharjhala Village Development Committee in the district. The forest was handed over to a local community in 2001.
The forest covers an area of 55.20 hectares and around 350 people from 22 households are living in the village.
Now, she is one of the proud members of the biogas model village where all the 22 households have installed biogas plants supported by Tarai Arc Landscape (TAL) Programme funded by World Wildlife Fund in 2005.
“Now I give more time to community activities like bio-diversity conservation, empowerment of mothers’ groups, sanitation programmes and forest management than earlier,” she said. “Earlier each family needed five to six cartloads of firewood for cooking annually and the number has now decreased to one cartload,” she added.
Ram Devi Chaudhary, FCFUG treasurer, says handing over of the forest to local community and installation of biogas plant has considerably changed her family’s lifestyle.
“We have constructed a toilet and a two-room bathroom as part of the biogas project. Now, we are more conscious about our health and sanitation,” she said.
TAL programme, according to FCFUG President Shoba Ram Chaudhary, instituted a revolving fund in 2005 in coordination with community forest users’ group that funded installation of biogas plants in the village.
A local, who is a member of the CFUG, is provided a loan to install a biogas plant and the family which plans to construct toilet along with biogas gets a subsidy of Rs. 2000. It costs around Rs. 18,000 to construct a biogas plant with a capacity of six cubic meters.
Posted on: 2010-04-15 07:13
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