Govt Launches Programme To Foster Women Entrepreneurship In NMDs

The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has designed a special programme under the Accelerated Implementation Plan (AIP)-2020-21 on job creation and income generation for the womenfolk in the newly merged districts (NMDs).

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Oct, 2020 ) :The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has designed a special programme under the Accelerated Implementation Plan (AIP)-2020-21 on job creation and income generation for the womenfolk in the newly merged districts (NMDs).

The programme will identify and train "Mashrani", the community-based female leaders who will manage a 20-30 member women's enterprise groups around targeted sectors.

In this connection a workshop was conducted here on Tuesday, on the special emphasis programme to discuss the proposed interventions, map resources offered by various departments and organisations, develop a coordination mechanism among stakeholders and formulate an action plan.

Secretary Social Welfare Department, Manzoor Ahmad and Chief Social Protection and Gender Mainstreaming, Planning and Development Department, Fazilat Jehan led the workshop proceedings, also attended by the representatives of Social Welfare Department, Akhuwat Islamic Microfinance, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority, Parwan-e-Khanum, and United Nations Development Programme.

The formation of women entrepreneur groups will be the first step towards supporting and graduating women towards micro and small enterprise development in the merged areas.

These groups will also enable the speedy delivery of government and non-government interventions for enterprise development. With the assistance of the Social Welfare Department, the groups will link government departments, financial institutions and development organisations to facilitate the required interventions, such as training for skills, access to no or low interest loans and provision of raw material inputs.

Agriculture, horticulture, livestock, dairy, poultry, apiculture, handicrafts, food processing and packaging, nurseries and kitchen gardening have been highlighted as the target sectors for the special emphasis programme.

The major aspects of the programme were presented at the workshop such as aligning the programme results with the goal of ending poverty, setting the foundations for women entrepreneurship, dealing with the constraints in a collective manner and relating women entrepreneurship with gender equality.

It was revealed that there would be an increased access to economic resources of 3,000 women in the two selected tribal districts.

Furthermore, there will be 150 women's productive groups formed around a common economic interest besides increasing the number of skilled women, building the capacities of women in organisational and managerial skills and linking women groups with local governments and business community and development organisations.

Highlighting the need and importance of the special emphasis programme, the workshop participants discussed the low female labour force participation of 5.9% compared to the male labour force participation of 38.6%.

Similarly, limited access of women to information, skills, finances and markets is also one of the major stumbling blocks that hamper women specific enterprise development.