MULTAN City News

‘VAWC to provide immediate relief, protection to victims’
From Our Correspondent
MULTAN: Punjab Population Welfare Minister Begum Zakia Shahnawaz has said that establishment of the Violence against Women Centre (VAWC) will provide all facilities to the women victims.
She said this while addressing the groundbreaking ceremony of the centre here on Wednesday. Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit senior member Salman Sufi, Australian High Commissioner Margrat Admision, Canadian High Commissioner Hather Carden, Netherlands Deputy Head of Mission Renate Pors, UN country representative on gender discrimination Jamshed M Qazi, UN women coordination officer Younthi Corlinezen and others also attended the ceremony. The minister said that Rs 140 million would be spend on the establishment of the centre to be set up on the direction of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to provide all facilities to the women victims under one roof while it would be completed in the next couple of months. She said that the prime objective to establish the VAWC was to provide immediate relief and protection to the women without external interference. The women victims would be provided round the clock services besides first aid, police reporting, FIR lodging, prosecution, medical examination, forensics and post-trauma rehabilitation, she informed. She said that Pakistan would be the first country in the region to launch such an initiative. The Canadian and Australian high commissioners, Netherlands deputy head of mission and UN representatives lauded the establishment of the country’s first Violence against Women Centre and extended cooperation and expertise in strengthening the voices against the women violence. Multan DCO Zahid Salim Gondal, who is supervising the whole pilot project, highlighted the importance and activities of the centre. Punjab Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit senior member Salman Sufi said that the Chief Minister was very keen on protection of women from violence and he had assigned the task to the SMU for preparing its viability and budgetary proposals. The VAWC would work round the clock to provide immediate relief and protection to the women with zero interference from outside, he added.