KARACHI, March 2: Speakers at a workshop on Sunday urged all the women parliamentarians to join hands and take a unified stand whenever an issue related to women is discussed in the House.

They were speaking at the plenary session of the four-day orientation workshop for women parliamentarians organized jointly by the Jinnah Institute and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

The foundation chief and member of the national assembly, Sherry Rehman, said that women parliamentarians had a dual responsibility as they had to deal with normal issues as well as highlight women’s issues in the House.

She said that it was a matter of shame that even after 55 years the country was still passing through a transition to democracy and the process had been interrupted many a time by the state apparatus, particularly the one in the uniform.

She said that the political government was presently passing through a difficult period as it had to take power from the military which had never been an easy task. She said that political parties would be willing to cooperate with the political government provided it worked for the supremacy of the civilians.

She said that though Mir Zafarullah Jamali was the prime minister, all the important policies — economic, foreign, etc — of the last government were being continued and even being run by the same people. She said all important foreign delegations coming to the country met Gen Pervaiz Musharraf who also went to represent the country at the all important events such as the non-aligned conference, where the prime minister should have been.

She said that Nab had recovered Rs2.5 billion from the corrupt people, and the biggest chunk (Rs1.057 billion) of had come from bureaucrats, while Rs450 million had been recovered from the armed forces officials; Rs269 from the politicians; and Rs770 million were recovered from others.

The chief of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Justice (retd) Majida Rizvi, urged women parliamentarians to formulate laws that provided justice to women who, he said, had been the victims of many a discriminatory law.

She said that the commission had got the Hudood Ordinance and other laws reviewed, and sent its recommendations to the government. She pointed out that at present the majority of the women in prisons were being tried under the Hudood laws.

She stressed the need for specific laws to counter sexual harassment at workplaces and domestic violence. She said that though the government had signed the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all forms Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the discrimination existed in the country.

David Taylor of the Aga Khan University, Dr Waseem and others also spoke on the occasion.

Over 35 women members of the provincial assemblies are participating in workshop where nine speakers from different backgrounds will speak. The speakers are: Dr Kaiser Bengali, Kemal Azfar, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Najam Sethi, Daniyal Aziz, Sanaullah Baloch, Nisar Khuhro, Kanwar Khalid Yunus and Anis Haroon.

The October 2002 polls returned 139 women MPAs in the four provincial assemblies — 128 on the reserved seats and 11 on general seats — and 74 MNAs.