January 7, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 6, 1426

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GILGIT, Jan 6: Women members of the Ghizer district council in the Northern Areas have threatened to quit the district council if equal development funds are not provided to them. They said they would resist any unfair or gender based distribution of the council’s funds.

The councillors said that funds had always been distributed equally in the past among all council members, irrespective of their gender, but now the male chairman was denying it.

“We are indebted to the government which has increased representation of women to 33 per cent in the local bodies.

Due to high literacy rate among Ghizeri women, all reserved seats for women have been filled without hindrance but the council’s chairman drags his feet over equal distribution of funds,” they alleged.

The women councillors, Yasmeen Nazar, Naheed Zaman and Zubeda, said that present attitude of the council’s chairman was discouraging for women to take part in politics.

They alleged that election for the third reserved seat for women was not held to discourage women.

The councillors claimed that they were working shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts and there was no justification not to give them their due share.

They said they had submitted a request to higher authorities in this regard.

When contacted, the chairman of the Ghizer district council, Dr Ali Madad Sher, said that even though the government had increased seats for women, the funds had not been increased.