HP gears-up to use drones
Shimla: Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu said the State Government was committed to introducing drone-enabled governance extensively in different departments to facilitate people of the state and monitoring at different levels.
While presiding over a meeting of the Information Technology Department here Sukhu the IT department in collaboration with the Drone Company has already conducted medical trials in Chamba, Kullu and Mandi districts and the results have been encouraging. He directed IT to submit the rules proposal regarding the usage of drones within a time period of 15 days.
Sukhu said that for drone operations, the IT department would be the nodal agency and Deputy Commissioners of concerned districts would extend logistic support to the concerned department willing to use drone technology.
He said the Deputy Commissioners would also identify places for developing drone hubs. He said that this would also bring efficiency in the working of the departments.
The Chief Minister said that Drone Technology has significant potential in monitoring law and order, disaster management, supervision of electricity supply lines, agriculture, horticulture, health delivery, road surface condition monitoring, assessment of tourists movement, illicit mining and illicit felling of trees. He said that this technology would be more useful, especially in snow-bound areas of the State.
He said that training has been imparted to 189 people including 68 officers from Revenue, Forest, Pollution Control Board, Technical Education and Education Departments. He further said that the first Drone Flying Training School is functional in ITI Shahpur and Drone Technician Course has been started in seven government-run ITIs at Mandi, Sirmaur, Shimla, Kangra, Solan (2 ITIs) and Kullu districts.
The Chief Minister also reviewed various initiatives of the IT department and directed to integrate of all the Helpline of different departments except emergency services with the Mukhyamantri Sewa Sankalp-1100 Helpline to facilitate the people in a better way.
