Women have as much right to development funding as men and they should not have to fight tooth and nail to get it. PHOTO:FILE
They have protested before, walking out of the assembly on October 11, saying that though they are elected on reserved seats, they still have constituencies to represent and that their constituents are as deserving as any other. There have been discussions in the past with the chief minister in an attempt to resolve the issue and they were promised Rs10 million each in development funding via the social welfare department. The K-P government released Rs10 million to the male legislators, with an announcement that another Rs20 million would be coming their way as well. No top-up was announced for the women. Add to the mix, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency chief, Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, who was of the opinion that the government was anyway wrong to allocate funds directly to lawmakers and it was more properly the job of local government officials. Funding allocation such as this has been an annual event, with Rs20 million supposedly allocated to lawmakers for development work. The lawmakers are supposed to submit proposals for the projects they want to fund, but there has been no on-record comment yet as to whether they have now or historically. There may be an issue about the accountability and transparency of such funding, but this does not excuse the apparent discriminatory practices against female legislators. Women have as much right to development funding as men and they should not have to fight tooth and nail to get it.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 3rd, 2013.
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@Toticalling: they already are but in small numbers and public looks at them from a symphathatic eye that they need money and there evil husbands or fathers are forcing them to earn
I have said it often enough. The only solution is to introduce quota system in all affairs, jobs, funds and representation in all legislative assemblies. I think what helps women more is securing a certain % of jobs in all spheres. They should work in bazars as salesmen, as office employees, in police and so on. That would make them visible in public life and less likely to be ignored.
Distribution of development funds to law makers is a vehicle of corruption, it has been going on for decades, I thought that PTI has promised in their manifesto to abolish this practice and they knew it that it was a corrupt practice but what can you expect from these people, they belong to the same corrupt society like the rest of the them in the country. The fact is that the leadership of PTI has lost credibility that includes Imran Khan, he is not better than any other corrupt politician in the land of Pak.