TURA: The 2nd day training programme on Implementation of Jal Shakti Abhiyan organized under the chairmanship of District Commissioner and District Programme Coordinator, MGNREGA, South West Garo Hills, S Ram Kumar concluded at DRDA Conference Hall, Ampati on Sunday.
The training programme was attended by various departments which included Soil and Water Conservation Department, Forest Department, Water Resources, Integrated Basin Development Livelihood Programme (IBDLP) and Community Led Landscape Management Programme (CLLMP).
The training programme was conducted by a team of experts chaired by Commissioner, Investment Promotion Centre, Sampath Kumar for all the districts of Meghalaya through video conferencing from NIC, Shillong.
“Meghalaya being the first state in India to come up with water policy has touched an important milestone. Meghalaya receives about 65 billion cubic metres of rainfall during monsoon but maximum of it flows to Bangladesh. In future, we might be able to export water to states deprived of water,” Sampath Kumar announced.
Kumar added that as most villages in Meghalaya depend on spring water, each village should have estimate water to be conserve during monsoon.
The objective of the training programme is to revive springs that has dried up both in quality and quantity through spring-shed development works. The training emphasised on constructing Recharge Pits or Trenches, Dug out Ponds, Check Dams, Diversion drains, Impounded Ponds, Contour Bunds and Afforestation with fruit or forest trees to revive dried up springs. It was discussed that 60% of saplings to be planted in and around the spring shed should be nature conservation plants while 40% could be commercial plants. As trees like Rubber and Pine excessively dry up the land surrounding it, they are not to be included among the trees to be grown around the spring shed.
Technical guidance on how and where to construct Contour Bund trenches was also provided by the experts from Shillong. Among the other topics of training included Erosion Control works such as Gully Plug, Gabion Wall and Check Dam.