Sukhu: Youth to be trained in drone-driven services

Shimla: Himachal Pradesh chief minister said the state govt would start drone courses in industrial training institutes (ITIs) to help youth secure self-employment.
Presiding over a meeting to discuss the role of national resource management and agro-ecology towards achieving the motto of “Samridh Himachal-Green Himachal”, the CM said that as many as 15,000 drone-driven services would be created in near future. Sukhu said that drone technology can play an important role for construction, agriculture, delivery of small logistics, medicines, food and can be adopted as a new mode for self-employment.
Reiterating that effective steps will be taken to make Himachal a self-reliant state by 2027 and the most prosperous by 2032, the chief minister said that the state govt was working towards judiciously utilising the existing natural resources of the state to make Himachal a green and clean state. He added that to create opportunities of self-employment for the youth, medium and small-scale industries play a pivotal role and the government was serious in setting up such units in the state so that the youth could also contribute towards strengthening the economy.
To harness rooftop solar energy and other renewals to open doors of self-employment, Sukhu said that every 100 solar rooftops on homes could create jobs for two individuals besides saving and earnings for the households and revenue generation for the state. He added that the target is to bring 10% (16 lakh) sloping roof households and buildings under the solar rooftop subsidy scheme on mission mode for which the exercise has been started. The youth can earn by selling excess electricity produced to the govt, for which it mulls to raise the price of electricity purchase and facilitate bank loans in near future, he added. Tourism contributes 7% to the GSDP and the influx seems to be increasing every year, he said.