KARACHI, May 24: Speakers at a seminar on Friday urged the women to take part in the political process so that they could safeguard their rights and play their due role in the progress of the country.

Speaking at a seminar on “Women’s participation in the October elections”, organized by the Pakistan Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Organization (PFBPWO), they asked them to join the political parties and participate in the ensuing national elections.

They also urged the political parties to give representation to women in their central executive bodies so that they took part in the decision-making process.

They said if the political parties did not do that, the government should make a law and fix a quota of reserved seats for women in the central bodies of the parties.

Referring to incidents in certain parts of the country where women were not allowed to even cast votes during the recently held local bodies polls, they urged the government to ensure that the women were free not only to cast their votes but to contest the elections also.

They said the government had increased the number of reserved seats for women in the National Assembly to 60 and now they would be in a position to keep a check that no law that was discriminatory towards the marginalized sections of the society — women, children, minorities, etc — was formulated.

They demanded that the laws discriminatory towards women, like the Hudood Ordinance, Law of Evidence, Citizenship Act, Family Laws, etc, be abolished.

They said women were not being given their due rights that had been guaranteed by the religion as well as by the Constitution due to cultural and social traditions prevailing in the society.

They said a large number of women were still being killed in the name of honour (Karo-Kari) killings.

Stove-burnings and other cases are on the rise, but concrete steps were not being taken to stop these practices.

Federal Information Minister Nisar A. Memon said the government was launching a new television channel specifically for news and views in a few months and sufficient time would allocated for talk-shows that would be highlighting the issues relating particularly to women.

Referring to a proposal put forth by the speakers, he said, women should be ready for the volunteer work so that these volunteers could be mobilised in the time of emergency and also for the development of the nation.

He said the government had provided over Rs 697 million to the First Women Bank that would be providing as small loans among over a million women so that they could start a new business or expand their on-going businesses and supplement their family income.

Pointing out that comparatively less number of women were registered as voters, he urged them to get themselves registered so that they could become eligible for not only voting, but also for contesting the October elections.

Former federal minister Javed Jabbar said that by reserving the 33 per cent seats in the local bodies, Pakistan has become among the few countries in the world, and certainly was the first Islamic country that had inducted a large number of women in their local government system.

Pointing out that the male parliamentarians were more vocal about foreign policy, they were neglecting the social sector but hoped that women would concentrate on the basic issues of health and education that effected the masses and which usually remained at the bottom of the priority list of the government while allocating funds in the budget.

PFBWFO chief Dr Salima R. Ahmad urged the government to try and have such women elected to the assemblies who were forward looking and development-conscious, otherwise they would not be able to play their role in the upliftment of the common women.

She also urged the government to register the women, aged between 18 and 30 years, and give them necessary training in civil defence and fire-fighting so that they could be of a help in times of emergency.

She also said the chairperson of the function who is also the chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Justice Majida Rizvi, had left, as the programme could not start on time and was delayed for over an hour.

Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid chief Zia Ahmed Awan said certain laws, the system of government, attitude of the law- enforcement agency personnel, and social and cultural traditions were discriminatory towards women who were not even being given their due rights.

He said the women had time and again proved that if equal opportunities were provided, they were not inferior to anybody and could do any job equally good or even better.

Khalida Farooqui, Nasreen Mehdi and others also spoke.