Poland up for scholarships to Bengal youth

Kolkata: Poland has proposed to offer scholarships to youth from Bengal, who wish to acquire knowledge of mining engineering in their country.

Poland is known for its expertise in the mining and coal sector and feels that the knowledge gained by the Bengal youth in their country can be utilised in the state.

"Technical knowledge of Poland in certain areas of the power sector can be beneficial for Bengal. We have sought details from Poland on how they want to proceed in this regard," state Power minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay said on the sidelines of the Business to Government (B2G) meeting at the Bengal Global Business Summit on Tuesday.

The minister, along with principal Power secretary Sunil Gupta and some senior officials of the department, held B2G meetings with as many as eight countries, including Poland, on how the state can partner with them in the power and renewable energy sector.

The countries include Poland, USA, Germany, Serbia, France, Skoda in Czechoslovakia, Netherlands and Scotland. The meetings went on for nearly four hours, spanning half an hour on an average with each of the countries.

"We have learnt that Poland, Germany and Scotland are technologically very sound in the power and renewable energy sector. We have informed them of our work in the power and renewable energy sector and our future plans and sought their detailed feedback on how they want to partner with us in this regard. Scotland has evinced interest in our method of adopting small-scale hydel and wind energy," a senior official of the department said. "We are interested in the use of renewable energy in power sector. Germans have given us an idea of their work in solar but their cost is much higher. There will be more interactions in this regard and we are hopeful of fruitful partnership in near future," the minister added.

He also said that some MoUs in the power sector will be signed on Wednesday in the power sector but refused to divulge details. It may be mentioned that Bengal is now a power surplus state and is already supplying power to countries like Bangladesh.