Women development department to establish more daycare centres in Sindh

The Sindh Women Development Department is going to establish more daycare centres in different cities to take care of the children of working women in the province.

This was announced by Women Development Minister Syeda Shehla Raza at a press conference on Monday. The daycare centre facility will be established in the cities of Larkana, Sanghar, Shikarpur, Matiari, Tando Muhammad Khan, Jamshoro and other districts of Sindh.

Raza said her department had set up a helpline phone service and a complaint cell to provide assistance to female members of the society facing hardships. She said the daycare centre facility was aimed at ensuring the best environment for nurturing the children of working women and also to take care of the health of such minors.

She said the Women Development Department had been facing acute shortage of staff as the four directorates of the department in the province had been functional in the province with minimum number of staff. The minister was of the view that the number of pensioners associated with the Sindh government had grew bigger than the number of in-service government employees in the province due to a ban remain on new recruitment during the last five years. “We do need more people to run our departments, but we are unable to conduct recruitment as the Sindh Public Service Commission also stands dissolved,” she said.

She said the Sindh government would launch the shelter home facility for women in Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah and Jacobabad. She disclosed on the occasion that the complex of the Women Development Department in Nawabshah had housed the office of the DIG Police for a long time, and her department had written a letter to get the possession of the building.

Responding to a question concerning the latest controversial statement of the prime minister on women’s clothes in the country, Raza said the entire society became a judge whenever any woman was subjected to such a criminal act as speculation started about her character and people began victim-blaming.

She recalled that the Hadood Ordinance had been promulgated in the dictatorial regime of General Ziaul Haq, and it had been prescribed under the law that four witnesses were required to prove the allegation of rape. “How come a blind female victim of rape will be able to identify the perpetrators of the heinous act against her? Does anyone keep with him a witness to commit rape?” She said it was lamentable that women’s dress code was being unduly linked with the incidents of sheer violence being committed against them in the society.