By NAN
The Federal Ministry of Environment said on Wednesday it had provided 3,000 rural women clean-cooking stoves in 2012, in line with its National Clean Cooking Scheme.
Mrs Ebere Akwani, a Senior Research Assistant, Renewable Energy Programme in the ministry, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Akwani said that the ministry had established a five-year programme to promote renewable energy and to create awareness on the need to imbibe clean cooking technologies.
“More than 80 per cent of the rural women in Nigeria still cook with a three-stone-fire place. The effect of smoke inhalation is better imagined than said.
“The woman that is cooking three meals a day on the open fire in an enclosed place usually smokes an average of between three to 18 packets of cigarette a day. That is on her health.
“ On the environment, of course as you are felling trees, we are creating path ways for flash floods and of course extreme heat.’’
The official, however, said that the ministry had just launched the Rural Women Energy Security (RUWES) project to further create awareness on clean cooking energy.
According to her, RUWES is a three-pronged project which seeks to address the need for clean cooking, heating and lighting technologies and cater for rural women.
She said it would also cater for the needs of women who were exposed to dirty energy practice that pushed them further down the poverty line.
