Ministry asked to create awareness about women responsibilities
By Bushra Makhdoom

ISLAMABAD—Ministry of Women Development is besieged with proposals from different walks of life to create awareness among women about their responsibilities under its community campaign project to make them active participants in national development.
Currently, the underlying objective of project is to sensitize the male segment of society about women’s rights. Given such rising demand and concrete results of project, a source told on Wednesday, the ministry had started to work out a summary for extension of the programme, which was, otherwise, going to complete this year.
The source said the interactive-based project, involving a total cost of Rs 38 million was pursued with four objectives- women’s rights of education, right of inheritance, Wani or Sawara customs and dowry related issues. The source added that ministry received thousands of proposals from the project’s targeted population to make the campaign as its regular activity to create awareness among women about their social and formal duties in tandem with promotion of the governments’s measures for their welfare.
Thus, appreciating the rationale and utility of these proposals, source said, the ministry had, initially, moved a proposal seeking supplementary grant of Rs 10 million to carry forward the project for next six months.
Answering a question, the source said the project could have hit snag,if the ministry had not shown dexterity in spending the allocated budget as it was a limited one, indeed.
“ To begin with, 20 proposed questions were narrowed down only to four questions because of budget constraints, similarly the ministry had to drop the network of councilors and Lady Health Visitors to engage them in the campaign’, the source observed.
About the outcome of the project, the source said the response from the targeted respondents was quite encouraging and spoke volumes of theprogramme’s success.
The source said that giving answer to the campaign’s first question” Can Women education be a solution to our social evils?”, 84 percent said ‘Yes,’ 0 percent replied with ‘no’ while 15.5 percent answered with “To some extent’.
To the second question” Is the demand of dowry the legal right of the boy and his family?”, the source said, 90 percent responded were option “No” five percent with ‘Yes’ and three percent said “ To some extent”.
The third question” Can a father or brother deprive the women of her right of property? , the source said, 97 percent replied with ‘No’ 0.2 with Yes and two percent said “To some extent”.
The fourth question” Is Wani and Sawara good tradition to finish family disputes?, 82 percent respondents replied with ‘No’, while eight percent said “Yes”, the source revealed.