SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, June 17: Now, the villagers of forest villages in the state would be trained as lac farmers soon.
The Forest department has planned an ambitious project of imparting training to villagers of forest-based villages across the state for boosting their livelihood through lac cultivation.
A senior officer of the state forest department Ranchi today said that in Jharkhand there is high scope of lac cultivation and this opportunity can be capitalized through imparting proper training and providing proper tool-kits to villagers living in the forest village.
In Jharkhand, lac cultivation opportunities are in galore in the forest villages of Dhanbad, Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Gumla and other districts.
In this regard two-day ago a workshop was organized in Gumla district in which scientists of the Lac Development Centre and Jharkhand State Co-operative Lac Marketing and Procurement Federation Limited (JASCOLAMPF) provided training and distributed tool –kits to 150 members of the Forest Protection Committee.
Additional Principal Chief Forest Conservator (APCFC) of the state Sanjiv Kumar, who addressed the workshop pointed out that there is high scope of lac cultivation in Jharkhand and this generates additional earning sources for the people living in the forest village.
“Small forest-based employment not only provides protection to the forest but also maintains biodiversity of the forest,” observed APCFC.
Sanjiv Kumar as divisional forest officer (DFO) had experimented with this project in the Tundi block of Dhanbad district in 2004-5 after buying seeds from Rajasthan which not only succeeded but also became the centre of attraction for forest villagers.
