Villagers in Varanasi opt for solar lamps to save electric energy

By Girish Kumar Dubey
Published: January 19, 2009Posted in: ANI News, NationalTags:

Jaunpur (Varanasi), Jan 19 (ANI): In the Damodar village of Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, one can see electric poles and wires, but the villagers don't get proper electricity. In order to solve their problem, the villagers instead of using electricity have started using solar energy for the lamps.

Most of the houses have solar plates placed on their terrace to tap solar energy and charge the lamps. After getting charged, these solar lamps work for almost four hours continuously.

"We used to receive high electricity bills. Sometimes it happened that in a whole day, there would be no current for either one or two hours or else even for a whole week. For that neither the Government took any responsibility nor the local administration came up with any solution. Therefore, this lamp is proving beneficial for us," said Nagendra Singh, a villager.

Earlier, people of this village used to light earthen lamps and oil lamps to lighten their houses. But because of the fear of fire from earthen lamps and electric shocks from electricity, the villagers have started using solar lamp.

Many self- help organizations are also contributing with their help to the villagers. One such organization is Pendraq International. It introduced this project in this village to provide electricity to the poor people

"The objective behind this project is to provide lights to those villagers who either belonged to margins of poverty line or rather below it. Therefore these lamps were introduced at rupees 250. Initially, people were not aware of solar energy. But after proper propagation, now every family owns a solar lamp," said Omprakash Tiwari, a worker, Pendraq International.

Damodar village and the Dalit slums situated in this village have become shinning examples of putting solar energy to proper use.  (ANI)