Mothugudem, August 02: The Chinese may boast that this is the year of the Dragon.
The comrades wouldn’t be happy otherwise. For us, though, this seems to be the year of the woman. We have a President, a de facto Prime Minister, a Foreign Minister..
Err… Foreign Secretary, Home Minister..the list goes on and on, at the top. But history has to be made at the grassroots and that, is what some tribal women in the district are doing.
‘‘It’s as good as it gets,’’ points out A Sarath, an excited Project Officer of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (Bhadrachalam). In a nutshell, the tribal women are about to get power for themselves and others. It’s a novel idea of the State Government and is being executed by the AP Tribal Power Corporation (TRIPCO). It’s taking up mini-hydel power projects, each of which, will in due course of time be managed by a committee of tribal women.
One such project is coming up at Mothugudem village in Khammam district.
‘‘The best part is, money generated from the sale of power from the hydel project to the various DISCOMS will be given entirely to the committee. Such a committee will earn close to Rs one crore for every MW that is generated at the plant,’’ explains Sarath. TRIPCO with the active particiapation of the ITDA, Bhadrachalam intends to build a 3 MW hydel power project at Mothugudem, which is 5.5 km downstream of Lower Sileru Hydro Electric Station (LSHES), over the river Sileru.
The project, to be constructed at a cost of about Rs 24 crore, will be funded in part (Rs 5-6 cr) by the Ministry of Natural and Renewable Energy while the rest would be pooled in, in the form of loans from financial institutions. The State Government is likely to bear some part of the burden under its Indira Kranthi Pathakam.
The government stipulation is that a committee of 20 people should be formed to run each project and manage its finances and of the 20, 16 have to be women. The treasurer, secretary and president of the panel should also be women. If the number of enterprising women is not enough to fill the panel, four men could be taken in.
The project at Mothugudem that the Express team visited deep in the forest, is slated to earn its committee close to Rs 3 crore per annum, which the panel spend for the community.
‘‘We want to construct a hospital with the first returns,’’ says Kovvasi Ramulamma, president of the committee for the Mothugudem hydel project.
TRIPCO is building three more such projects of 1.2 MW each at Vetmamidi, Mitlapalem and Pinjari Konda.
All these projects will be operationalised in 1-1.5 years.
–Agencies–