HYDERABAD, July 22: Speakers at a seminar on “political participation of women” on Thursday have called for review of the Hasba Bill which, they said, would lead to more curbs on women’s participation in the system. They said that the bill should not be enforced in the NWFP or in any other part of the country because it would alienate the women who have started taking part in the political system.

The seminar was organized at the press club under the aegis of Aurat Foundation.

Rana Siddiqui, Saira Naseer, Sehar Rizvi, Shamshad Memon, Naureen Rajput, Dr Najeeb Memon, Khalid Jatoi, Gulnar Sheikh and Ghaffar Malik spoke on the occasion.

The foundation has planned to establish camps outside the offices of returning officers to facilitate women candidates to file their nominations for different categories.

Former member district council Saira Naseer said that women had played their due role in the first tenure of local government system although the commitment on the part of district government officials with regard to solution of women’s issues was completely missing. She said that women were never acknowledged in the council and in the district government yet they tried their level best to highlight women issues at the provincial and national level.

She said that they had proved that they were more effective then the UC nazims.

She said that women wanted to work with their male counterparts because they were supposed to be two wheels of the society and without men’s support women could not excel in their fields.

She said that reservations of women regarding Hasba Bill must be removed because they believed that the Bill would put more curbs on women’s participation in the system.

She also called for training of women councillors as soon as the second tenure of local government representatives began after completion of local body polls and added that they should also be paid honorarium like nazims.

She said that their role must be specified by the National Reconstruction Bureau in the SLGO clearly so that they should be acknowledged properly.