MAINTENANCE
Clay oven need maintenance and care to prolong the effectivity and life of Improve Cook Stove (ICS). Information is provided while installing ICS to house owner /users. During our pilot- maintenance program in Gulmi district, we found ICS in very poor condition and maintenance was lacking in more than 70% of all ICS that we disseminated.
Findings of the pilot project urge us to initiate a maintenance expert training. We selected our experienced stove masters from Pyuthan and Gulmi to train and educate them as maintenance expert. After the training maintenance expert can offer their services like cleaning of chimney, repairing the oven body, inside fire chamber and fire hole as well as information about proper use of the chulo, health education to the ICS users. Our maintenance expert are making ICS users aware of good functioning ICS.
The trained experts are offering their service to the house owner and need to get paid for the work. During the project of three years (2019 to 2022) the cost of maintenance and repair will be subsidized by 50% from German organization Ofenmacher e.V. During that time the Experts will build up their network and will become independent. The concept of maintenance expert is also to create self-employment that should sustain for long time and community should get service offer when they need it.
First training for maintenance experts were held in October 2019. 20 Experts from Gulmi and Pyuthan district were trained. The trained expert will start their work from November 2019.
