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BLSO accomplishes appreciable job for economic emancipation of women

By Zahiruddin

CHITRAL: The chairman of Biyar Local Support Organization (BLSO) Syed Sardar Hussain Shah has said that the organization is working on an extended programme to give economic emancipation to the women folk of the area to arrest the rising trend of the women which was found the root cause of the problem. Talking to chitraltimes.com here on Saturday, he said that BLSO is a local support organization established three years ago with the help of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) working for development in different sectors. He said that the organization gave top priority to the women development from the day of its establishment in its area of activity in union council Charun. Giving details of the programmes of women amelioration, Mr. Shah said that initially 140 women were imparted training in small enterprises in the leading institutions of Islamabad and Lahore who further trained the educated as well as the illiterate housewives. He said that micro-credit scheme for the women was then introduced which enabled the women to launch their own business on small scale while guidance and counseling was provided to them on each step. Mr. Shah said that utilizing their training in different trades, the women started manufacturing different articles like shampoo, organic jam, tomato paste apart from embroidery and raising household poultry and honey bees. He said that the women were also trained and helped to grow vegetables on commercial scale to supplement their income. Describing the story of success, he said that the embroidery articles produced by the women were of superb quality and were put to exhibition in Islamabad on national level and the BLSO received demand of the articles from different countries including India and UAE. He said that the carpets manufactured of pure wool of local sheep without dyed to retain its natural and original colour. “Using purely the local items, the women were able enough to prepare decoration pieces which are in high demand in the national market and it brings them a pretty remuneration changing their very destiny for the better”, he said. Mr. Shah said that to discourage the middlemen, BLSO established a display centre at Booni to pool the produce of the women for onward marketing it. He said that the locally made shampoo has replaced those in the market manufactured by the national and multinational companies because no chemical is used as its ingredient. He said that according to a recently held survey, the women associated with BLSO earned more than 20 thousand rupees a month which makes them to lead a comfortable and respectable life while the number of suicide cases in the area has also declined. To support the indigent but talented female students to carry on their higher education, the BLSO adopted a novel way, he said and explained that their mothers or elder sisters were provided financial assistance to start a micro-business to support her with the profit accrued from it. Mr. Shah said that the poverty and indigence is the main cause of domestic frictions which leads to suicide of women and BLSO has done an appreciable job in this regard. He said that BLSO has also a maternity home at Charun Oveer which is a remote area and it has greatly helped to reduce the number of maternal and neonatal deaths.