Use of biogas being popular in the villages of Rajshahi but due to non-cooperation from the Bangladesh Council for Industrial and Scientific Research (BCSIR) and the banks, many people willing to set up biogas plants at their houses are failing to reap benefit from this easy, pollution free technology.
It is learnt, Rajshahi district unit of BCSIR used to set up bio-gas plants under a subsidized project to make the use of bio-gas popular.
About a decade ago, many people set up such plants beside their households and were benefitted from using those. But, due to lack of supervision and non-cooperation from the officials of BCSIR, the project of bio-gas remained almost suspended in Rajshahi villages.
Even those who set up the plants have lost their interest because of lack of supervision from the concerned authorities and those who are willing to set up such plant were frustrated because they could not find out the way to set up such a plant and the banks also do not grant them loan for such work.
Those who are interested to set up bio-gas plants on personal initiatives are not disbursed loan from the bank at an easy term that is why they are also losing interest.
Chand (52) an inhabitiant of Ramchandrapur area of Rajshahi city had set up bio-gas plant at his cattle farm decades ago but due to non-cooperation from the staff of BCSIR, he has sold all his cattle heads and stopped the use of biogas.
Abeda Khatun of Haripur village under Paba thana has set up a biogas plant at her own cost. She rears three cows and from the cow dung she produces bio-gas . She informed, any bio-degradable materials may be used for producing bio-gas. She said, often she used vegetables like radish, cabbage and tomato to produce bio-gas when those are cheap enough and farmers used to threw those away.
She informed by spending taka 20,000 any one can prepare a biogas plant by adopting easy and available technology from BCSIR.
Meanwhile, a responsible official from BCSIR, Rajshahi informed, the government was installing biogas plants to the willing people as incentive at a subsidized rate.Those who rear cattle or manage a poultry farm would be able to set up a biogas plant near their houses or farms. But, most of the cattle head owners use cow-dung for preparing fire materials called 'Nonda' by drying up the cow-dung and poultry farm owners also dumped the poultry waste in a pond or water body to use those as fish feed. For these reasons, the biogas plant initiated by the government could not be popularised.