Minister Environment & Forest, Climate Change, Government of Nagaland, Imkong L Imchen launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) for Nagaland, here Wednesday at IMC Hall.
In his speech, Imchen said the PMUY was a big initiative taken up by the central government to help women living ‘Below Poverty Line’ lead a healthier life, using LPG instead of the traditional timber fuelled chullahs in their homes.
He said, the initiative would greatly help in keeping a balance in the climatic conditions of the country in line with the United Nation’s call for climatic change.
Imchen also said that as minister in-charge of climate change, he has concern on addressing the degradation of ecology and environment in order to ensure stability for posterity. The minister said the PM with the visionary scheme had not only helped in solving the climatic issue but also has targeted the vulnerable and down-trodden section of the society which also aimed at even the slum dwellers through the women beneficiaries. In the context of Nagaland, Imchen said, the programme would help in decreasing deforestation which is practised in order to gather timber resulting in huge destruction to the ecological balance.
He said that the programme was clearly not a political agenda but a humane initiative both for the population and the environment which would go a long way in sustaining human civilization.
The programme would serve as nourishment for the whole country and its people transcending the political philosophies and ideologies, Imchen added.
The minister later handed out the PMUY LPG connections to the first 20 beneficiaries shortlisted from among the 1.8 lakh beneficiaries in the whole state.
Initially the launching of the programme was to be launched by Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, but he could not make.
Indian Oil AOD state office, executive director, Dipankar Ray proposed the welcome address in which he informed that the PMUY programme started a year ago in other parts of the country but in the North East region, Nagaland was the second state after following Assam.
He said two important features of the programme was tackling the environmental issues like emission of smoke, deforestation and enriching the lives of the womenfolk as they wouldn’t have to suffer the pain to gathering firewoods and exposing themselves to unhealthy environments.
Under this scheme, the beneficiaries will only have to pay nominal connection fee of Rs 1,600 for both the LPG stove and the cylinder.
He said, in Nagaland presently, only 45 percent of the population was using LPGs instead of traditional chullahs but through this programme 90 percent of the population was expected to switch over to LPG.
The aim of the programme was to take the LPG usage in the country to 80 percent and basing on that target, a total of 1.5 lakh new LPG connections would be made in Nagaland in the next two year, Ray informed.
The launching programme was attended by Tovihoto Ayemi, MLA, Deputy Commissioner Dimapur, Kesonyü Yhome, IAS, besides other officials from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India and other oil-marketing companies including Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited.
On the sidelines of the launching programme, a press conference was conducted wherein Dipankar Ray disclosed that although LPG subsidies had been put into place for over a decade, the schemes were being misused and were not reaching the intended section of the population.
Answering to a query on the shortage of LPGs in the state, Ray said the shortage was mostly because of lack of a bottling and storage plants in the region. However, he said Indian Oil was upgrading its storage depot in Assam which would help in easing the problem faced right now, not just in Nagaland but all over the North East Region.
Answering to another query on the list of beneficiaries which was data taken from 2011 census, Ray said that was only the initial list as they had to start with a concrete data but the list would be revised and necessary additions made once the new connections begin.
The event was attended by women beneficiaries from all parts of the state.