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| Ministry taking solid steps for women development |
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Sunday, November 08, 2009
Islamabad
Ministry of Women Development is taking concrete steps to make womenfolk self-reliant in all respects for achieving national prosperity.
As part of such efforts, director of the ministry M. Taimur told APP that the ministry had established 25 women crisis centres renamed as Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Centres for women in distress in the country.
Besides, he added, five more centres would be opened as per commitment of the ministry to facilitate women who were contributing valuable services towards national development process.
Replying to a question, he added, the main purpose of the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Centres for Women was to provide rehabilitation facilities to women in distress.
He added these shelters also provided temporary shelter to victims of violence in emergencies, besides giving them free legal aid and counselling.
Moreover, he added the ministry successfully pursued the IT project for women councillors and educated them on basic computer skills with a purpose to enable them to effectively discharge their duties being public representative at local level.
Given the popularity of the project among women councillors, the ministry was taking steps to launch second phase of the programme, he added.
In this regard, he added, the preparation of training Manual, featuring lessons on basic computer skills was in final stages.
Replying to a question, he said there were enough resources to successfully run these projects that would go a long way in empowering womenfolk. He added that women were contributing valuable services in every walk of life and the initiatives being taken by the ministry of women development would further encourage them.
On the other hand, women rights activists say, there is a need to make elaborate measures to educate women of their legal rights and raise awareness about the ministry’s steps for women empowerment.
An NGO worker said that women especially in rural areas did not know about the ministry’s centres that served as shelters for women in distress.
As a result, she added, such ignorance about location and objective of centres, landed victims in further difficulties.
Thus, she suggested that the ministry should launch a media campaign to educate women on this front.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
