Success story of Aslam with biogas plant source Biogas-PDBP -

Success story of Aslam with biogas plant source Biogas-PDBP

Jag Da Chak is a small village in the district of Nankana Sahib, located in Punjab. At a thirty minute drive from the nearest city, this village has been around since before partition. Most of the people in the sixty four households that comprise of this village are farmers, who grow rice, wheat and cotton.

The scarcity of water and the severe shortages in electricity pose serious concerns for farmers all over Punjab including in Jag Da Chak, who spend thousands of rupees every month on diesel oil which they use to run their tube wells. “My tube well needed 30 liters of diesel a day, which I buy at a rate of 110 rupees a liter,” says Rai Aslam Kharal, a resident of this village. Aslam owns 73 acres of cultivable land in Jag Da Chak, on which he grows rice and wheat.

He talks about the high cost of electricity, despite the frequent outages, “My monthly electricity bill used to be anywhere between 17,000 to 23,000 rupees. But even then, I could not run my tube well for as long as I needed and was forced to rely solely on diesel.” When Aslam saw a PDBP biogas plant installed in one of his neighbor village, he was intrigued. “I thought to myself, when they can generate enough gas to run a kitchen, why can’t I do the same for my tube well?” With some assistance from PDBP’s partner, the Biogas Construction Company, Aslam had a 15 cubic meter plant installed next to his tube well. “The biogas plant enables me to run my tube well for 8 hours a day; four in the morning and four in the evening”, says Aslam, “I’m saving around 75,000 rupees every month now because I only need 8 liters of diesel a day.” Life has certainly become easier for Aslam, who used to take on large amounts of debt to pay for fuel and electricity. He even channels the bio-slurry generated from the biogas plant into his fields to enhance his crop.

Now Aslam encourages his relatives and fellow villagers to install biogas plants of their own to run their tube wells. “The savings I have achieved thanks to this plant have really helped my family,” says Aslam.