Jamshedpur, May 26: Smoke engulfing houses twice daily would soon be passé in the 82 villages in Dalma.

For, the forest department and Jharkhand Renewal Energy Development Agency (JREDA) are all set to introduce ovens made of brick and clay in these hamlets for cooking that would release smoke outside the houses. The innovative product would be a better substitute to the cumbersome steel chulhas (ovens), currently used in the villages.

“The stoves would help keep the houses pollution free. Moreover, they can be customised according to the dimension of utensils used at respective homes,” said Siddharth Tripathy, the divisional forest officer, Ranchi, under whose jurisdiction the Dalma sanctuary falls.

“Once the process of building the chulhas is through, the existing ones will be destroyed to ensure that they are completely out of use,” he added.

The new stoves are expected to improve the health index of the dwellers of the 82 villages in the Dalma forest cover. The ovens would also prompt a substantial reduction in tree-felling in the reserve. Experts believe that the use of smokeless chulhas would bring down the rate of tree-felling by almost 60 per cent.

To be built on the Sukhad model (a mixture of brick and cement mortar) by JREDA, a PVC pipe would be fitted to the chulhas to ensure that the smoke does not remain trapped inside the stove. The fume will make its way out through the curve on the wall, which will open outside the house.

A JREDA team was in Dalma yesterday to see how soon the training can begin.