Taraba State Coordinator of the Nigeria For Women Project (NFWP), Isaac F. Yarafa, has asked them to embrace alternative methods of cooking.
He stated this weekend while introducing the women to the alternative fuel wood energy source at a training organized by NFWP in collaboration with the state government.
The seven days briquetting training,
which brought Women Affinity Groups (WAG) together in Bali council, according to him, will go a long way to reduce the risk associated with “some health challenges arising from the smoke that come from firewood.
If they take the exercise seriously, he believed it would also help reduce the risk of “attack and rape of our women who enter the bush to cut firewood.”
The coordinator was also of the view that the programme is “going to empower our women with capacity for additional source of income.” He said the women are the first beneficiaries to be trained on “briquetting in the whole project locations across the country. ”
The training which according to him is being implemented across the three local government councils of NFWP, he is optimistic will be scaled down to the entire axis of the state.
He stressed that the training that will be also taken to the rural communities would save women from the various dangers they often encountered while sourcing for fire woods in the bush.
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He said “with the skill that will be acquired by the women at the end of this training, waste elimination and healthier cooking methods which translate into healthier lives for our women is envisaged.”
Also speaking, the state Commissioner of Women and Child Development, Bridget Twar, said listed businesses which they cannot support. According to her, they include “firewood and charcoal businesses.”
She said the briquetting training “is designed by the project to help alleviate the suffering of our women who are daily involved in the use of firewood and charcoal for home use which has been known to have its attendant health and environmental implications.”
Applauding Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku, for throwing his weight solidly behind the project, she is optimistic that the incoming state government will as well sustain the project.
Some of the women beneficiaries who explained to The Trumpet the challenges they often confront while going into the bush to source for firewood, believed that the training will liberate them from such hazards.
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