BHUBANESWAR: The Centre on Friday launched the fourth phase of training under ‘Amrit Dharohar’ capacity-building scheme for people residing close to Bhitarkanika National Park.
Under the initiative, IITTM-Bhubaneswar, an autonomous body under MoT, in collaboration with MoEFCC will build the capacity of 60 local community members around the Ramsar site in order to strengthen nature tourism and provide alternative livelihood to the local community. The community members will be trained and certified as nature guides.
The initiative is being implemented jointly by the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to enhance livelihood opportunities for local communities by harnessing the nature-tourism potential of Ramsar sites across the country. Bhitarkanika and Chilika in Odisha are two of the five priority Ramsar sites along with Sultanpur National Park in Haryana, Yashwant Sagar and Sirpur in Madhya Pradesh identified in the first phase by the ministries for taking up training programmes for local communities.
The inauguration of the training programme was attended by the regional director (east) of the Ministry of Tourism Sagnik Chowdhury and the head of IITTM-Bhubaneswar Sabir Hussain. They informed that under the initiative, two training programmes of 15 days each named Alternative Livelihood Program and Paryatan Navik Certificate (PNC) will be conducted.
With the help of the Odisha State Wetlands Authority (OSWA) and Mangrove Forest Division, Rajnagar, 60 participants (30 for each course) have been identified from the local communities in and around Bhitarkanika to impart training as nature guides. The training programme for local community members of Chilika will be conducted soon.