RAWALPINDI: MNA Tahira Aurganzeb of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Monday assured that the government would protect the rights of working women.

Speaking at Women Workers Convention, organized by Uks –a research, resource and publication centre-- in collaboration with Gender Equity Programme (GEP) at a local hotel, she said the government had initiated a number of programmes for women aimed at providing peaceful environment at their workplace.

This was second convention arranged by Uks on the theme of “women-friendly policies at workplaces’ for formal sector workers with emphasis on the protection of women against sexual harassment at workplaces Act 2010.

More than 200 domestic workers from the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad attended the convention and demanded recognition of their work under labour laws.

The speakers exhorted the domestic workers to get united for their rights as the existing laws did not apply on the domestic workers.

The PML-N MNA said the government had made a number of legislations in the past and it was doing work to improve the environment for the working women in all sectors.

She urged the civil society to help the government in making new legislation aimed at protecting the domestic workers rights. She said that the government wanted to do more work for the protection of women’s rights.

She gave the example of Punjab government had made a legislation for the protection of women share in the property and allocate quota at all the jobs in government offices.

She said that apart from the government, there was a dire need to create awareness among the people to give respect to the domestic workers and provide better environment so that they could earn money for their families.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2015

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