Bhubaneswar: Fakir Mohan University Balasore Knowledge oriented power resilience program for Odisha should take the lead. This was stated by Tourism Minister Ashwini Kumar Patra while participating in a two-day National Workshop on Electricity Resilience at the University Campus on Thursday.
Patra said that such a program is being organized for the first time in any university. “The university should set up a center of excellence to conduct research and development and take social responsibility to ensure an electricity safe society,” he said.
He appealed to other universities of Odisha to take such initiatives. The objective of the event was to mobilize educational knowledge in panchayats and villages to build electricity resilience among tribals, farmers, fishermen, labourers, cattle herders and people working in the open. “We should work towards zero death due to lightning,” he said.
He urged the universities to adopt a practical approach and implement the results of the workshop by creating awareness on the use of science and technology in preventing lightning deaths, especially among tribal, farmers and rural communities.
Workshop on Electricity Resilience was organized FM University, India Meteorological Department (IMD), Climate Resilient Observing-System Promotion Council (CROPC) and Union Ministry of Earth Sciences,
colonel Sanjay SrivastavaThe Chairman, CROPC, New Delhi highlighted that the deaths due to lightning are 100% avoidable. He emphasized the importance of such workshops, which are helpful in creating awareness among the general public in rural areas, the communities that are vulnerable to lightning.
He urged that the people’s representatives like MPs, MLAs should include electricity safe shelters in the villages through their MPLAD/MLALAD funds and make the villages electricity safe in a phased manner.
Mrityunjay Mohapatra, Director General, IMD addressed the program online and appreciated the initiative taken by Fakir Mohan University.
University Vice Chancellor Santosh Kumar Tripathi said that FM University will start from Bhadrak district and will soon work with Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. “Around five hundred farmers and villagers of Mayurbhanj and Balasore districts have been benefitted by participating in the workshop,” he said.
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