ISLAMABAD, Oct 12: The Ministry of Women Development and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday signed a $4.5 million grant aid programme entitled "Women's Political School (WPS)" here.

The signing ceremony was held on the ministry's premises and was attended by special advisor to the prime minister on women development, Nilofer Bakhtiar, UNDP Resident Representative, Onder Yucer and representatives of the Economic Affairs Division (EAD).

The programme is meant to politically educate and train women councillors at district, tehsil and union council levels. Ms Bakhtiar said it was right time for such an initiative when the country was bracing for the second local government elections in March, 2005 under the devolution plan.

In this regard, the UNDP has been of great help for the political training of women councillors since the first local governments elections held in March 2001, she added.

Onder Yucer said the Women's Political School project was an integral component of the UNDP's Gender Support Programme for Pakistan. The Royal Norwegian Embassy is a strategic partner of UNDP and has contributed $2 million to date towards the Gender Support Programme, he said.

The project has been designed to sustain the gains of the Women's Political Participation Project (W3P) which was a pioneering effort to train and nurture over 36,000 newly elected women councillors at the district, tehsil and union council levels, Mr Onder added.

The governments of Pakistan, Norway and UNDP jointly supported it. It ran from February 2002 to March 2004. Joint efforts behind the W3P resulted in the training of more than 80 per cent of the elected women councillors from the local government elections of 2000-2001.

To sustain W3P's gains, the need for coordinating the efforts of training women political leaders, particularly at the local level, was deemed necessary. The project will help institutionalize the process of training women political leaders, taking into account the dynamic political climate of the country and the upcoming local government elections in 2005, he maintained.

The project will help empower the women politicians to use their public offices to raise the issues of women. The aim is to deliver a holistic and integrated capacity development programme for women councillors.

The project will provide reliable support networks and systems for women participating in the political process and build the institutional capacities of relevant government departments, the civil society and training institutions.

The project will equally focus on all four provinces as well as the Federally Administered Tribal and Northern Areas (FATA and FANA), targeting roughly 40,000 women councillors altogether.