ISLAMABAD, May 25: The federal cabinet on Wednesday approved women development ministry’s Gender Reform Action Plan (GRAP), Adviser to the Prime Minister on Women Development Nilofar Bakhtiar said. She told a press conference after the cabinet meeting that the GRAP had been endorsed in principle and termed it a historical decision for the emancipation of women in Pakistan.

“For the next year under the GRAP, the government has made an allocation of Rs300 million. It is a four-year plan which will be implemented in two phases of two years each,” Ms Bakhtiar said.

In all, the GRAP will cost the national exchequer over Rs700 million.

The plan is to be funded exclusively by the federal government and no foreign exchange component is involved in its implementation, the adviser said.

Under the plan, gender sections would be set up in key ministries; law and planning divisions, finance, establishment division, information and labour.

“These gender sections will be staffed with officials fully gender-sensitized who will oversee the respective ministries’ progress related to the GRAP, and will report back to the women development ministry, as the latter will be the focal point of its implementation,” Ms Bakhtiar said.

Since the health and education miniseries have sufficient number of women employees, they have been selected to start with, she said.

Responding to a questions, the adviser said ministries’ rules of business would be re-written for the effective implementation of the GRAP in their domains.

She said Rs250 million of the first allocation of Rs300 million would go to the provinces, which would then transfer the funding to the district governments or wherever required.

All provinces have worked out their own GRAPs according to their own needs, she said.

All the four chief ministries and provincial cabinets except the NWFP had already approved their respective GRAPs, which is a good omen for the country, she said.

Asked about the GRAP, the adviser said as the first success, the government had agreed to have 10 per cent quota for women in CSS, besides open merit.

At present, the country has not even a single woman in grade 22 which tells to what extent public sector employment system needs to be reformed, she said.

“Under the GRAP, we want at least two women members in the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC). There must be 20 per cent women representation in the parliamentary committees,” she said.

The GRAP seeks gender equality in four key areas: Political; administrative and institutional; in public sector employment; policy and fiscal.

It is also about mainstreaming of gender equality perspective across public policies, laws, programmes and projects by various organs and agencies of government, ensuring that women’s interests and needs are adequately represented in public policy formulation and related programmes.