Sun Dryer and Prosperity of Economic Situation of Nazifa’s Life

Dehqan Weekly / Morsal Hashemi
Nazifa is a resident of Tohidabad, Ghazni province. Her husband passed away about three years ago and took the responsibility of taking care of her family with no source of income. Nazifa was living a miserable life with her seven children until she was assisted by Horticultural Value Development Sector Development Project (HVCDSP) a sun-drying base, so that she and her family could make a living from this machine.
After her husband perished, she was the only one taking all the responsibilities of her family. In the beginning, she was dealing with laundry and doing housework for others to feed her family, yet she was not able to provide all the necessities for her 8 family members due to his low salary.
The (HVCDSP) project of the Ministry of Agriculture which is funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB). The 75 million $  project works to grow infrastructure and boost the value chain of horticultural products, as well as grow and enhance national capacity to develop horticultural exports in 11 provinces.
Ghazni is one of the most yielder provinces for vegetables. Therefore, it is needed to give out more sun dryers and prevent the loss of fresh vegetables and fruits. In this regard, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL), within the framework of horticultural value chain sector development project, started the process of distributing sun dryers to needy women and Ms. Nazifa is one of the beneficiaries of this process. Ms. Nazifa talking about sun dryers said, "I used to make a living by working in other people's homes, which was not enough for our family members, but when I was given sun drying base by horticultural project our economic state was changed and prospered."
The dryer dries about 50 to 80 kilograms of fresh vegetables or fruits at a time. She further said that we buy tomatoes, eggplant, and prunes and dry them using a sun-dryer, and when winter comes, we sell all these dried ingredients at a high price.
The distribution of these devices assist poor and low-income women to use it to improve the economic conditions of their families and to be economically self-reliant. It should be noted that the process of distribution of 300 solar dryers by horticultural value chain development sector project (HVCDSP) continues in 11 provinces of the country.