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Santosh Kumar Gupta (Reporter)

Bijpur/ Sonbhadra –

Like last year, this year too a girl empowerment campaign is being organized for one month by NTPC Rihand CSR Department. Grand inauguration of Girl Empowerment Campaign Workshop on 21st May at Tarang Auditorium, Chief Guest Sanjay Asati, Project Head (Rihand), Special Guest Sandeep Nayak, Project Head (Singrauli), Pragya Nayak, President, Vanita Samaj, Neelu Asati, President, Vartika Mahila Mandal Samiti, Pranay Kumar Nayak, General Manager (Operations and Maintenance) Satendra Kumar Sinha, General Manager (Operations, NTPC Vindhyachal), Manikyan Suresh, It was done with NTPC song and lighting of lamp by General Manager (Maintenance and ADM, NTPC Vindhyachal), Deputy Commander CISF Prakash, Heads of Departments, senior members of Vartika Mahila Mandal Committee, Union and Association representatives and other distinguished guests.

Chief Guest Project Head Asati, while emphasizing the importance of girl empowerment, appreciated this campaign organized by CSR for the all-round development of the girl child. He said that empowerment means giving power to someone or making someone strong and confident. He also said that this campaign is not limited to education only but it is a holistic development initiative which provides educational support, skill building, personality development and life skills training. Addressing the girls participating in the workshop, Shri Asati said that you all are the epitome of strength, resilience and hope. Whatever you learn from here, you have to share it with your surroundings also. Before this, the chief guest and other invited dignitaries were welcomed with flower bunches.

Human Resources Department Head Rajesh Bochapai heartily welcomed all the distinguished guests and expressed his gratitude for their presence. Giving information about the workshop, he said that this year a total of 140 girls from seven schools have participated in the training. On this occasion, the former participants of the Girls Empowerment Campaign and the girls studying in DAV School enthralled everyone by presenting a cultural program and expressed their gratitude towards NTPC Rihand by sharing the experiences of the workshops organized in the previous years. During the program, the GEM girls of the previous workshop who were studying in DAV and performed excellently were honored with mementos.

Local people say that while on one hand NTPC talks about women and girl empowerment, on the other hand the families displaced by the project are still struggling for basic facilities, employment and proper rehabilitation. People raised the question that when there is talk of empowerment and prosperity, why concrete efforts are not being made towards making the displaced families self-reliant and prosperous.

Local people say that NTPC should stop showing off by holding only small programs. If we are really talking about development and empowerment, then first of all serious work should be done on permanent employment, education, health, roads, water and basic facilities for the displaced and local people. People say that NTPC can fulfill its social responsibility only by adopting a concrete policy for real development of the area.

Local people also raised questions on the rehabilitation system and said what kind of rehabilitation is this where even today water is being supplied to the people through tankers. People say that once upon a time, the documents and conditions of the Supreme Court had talked about providing portable water i.e. pure drinking water to the displaced people, but the ground reality still appears incomplete. The villagers allege that without permanent water system, employment and basic facilities, rehabilitation has remained limited to papers only.

Local people say that on one hand NTPC is running a women empowerment campaign, while on the other hand the displaced people and people of nearby villages are still struggling for water, employment and basic facilities. People allege that this shows that NTPC is only fulfilling the paper quorum. Villagers say that if social responsibility is to be truly fulfilled then permanent facilities and development should be provided to the people of the area instead of cosmetic programmes, otherwise such campaigns have no real meaning.