June 24, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 08, 1428

RAWALPINDI, June 23: Spreakers at a seminar on Saturday said 70 per cent of the services provided by women are unpaid while majority of the remaining services are underpaid.

The seminar on importance of skill development for women’s empowerment in Pakistan was organised by the National Urban Poverty Alleviation Programme (NUPAP) in collaboration with Rawalpindi Arts Council.

NUPAP, a United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) project, is providing necessary training to the women of slums to help them earn a respectable livelihood.

Without the empowerment of women folk no nation could progress, the speakers said.

Dr Ataul Mohsin, representing NUPAP, said majority of women were involved in the household work that had largely been unpaid. There should be equal opportunities of development for both genders if the real progress of the nation is needed. He said political empowerment of women is also obligatory in the Third World that has long been a challenge. It is not the duty of only some NGOs to work for the women development but all sectors will have to play their role for better and permanent results.

Shazia Azhar, Head of Skill Development SACH, said four basic approaches were required to help women develop. Education of women, their training, advocacy for their works and the fourth is entrepreneurship for their crafts. She said the UNPOP had been working for capacity building of the women and conducting seminars and workshops to promote their skills and to help them sell their crafts.

She said the NUPAP was planning for the counselling of women for self growth and income generating training and provision of micro-credit programmes to sustain their works. “We are also helping the urban women in securing linkage with market, providing them outlets to display their works and holding exhibitions for the projection of their crafts,” she added.

Sadia Khurshid, Coordinator NVM, said there was dire need of micro-credit financing for the uplift of women in the Third World countries. Opportunities must be enhanced for them to usher them in the mainstream of national economy.

Samina Omar Asghar, Director SUNGI, said people in their part of the world used to be involved in handicrafts and their younger generations were not inclined towards acquiring the crafts of their ancestors.

“There are two basic reasons for this, first new skills and works are easy to learn and take less time to master them and secondly the middlemen who deal with handicraft workers pay them less money thus discouraging them.” The need of the hour is to make the artisans real the real significance of their unique works in the modern world, she added.