'PPP government empowered women'

The Sindh Minister for Women Development Ms Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto has said that our religion and constitution has given basic rights, protection and freedom in prescribed limits to women and PPP government has empowered women whenever it gets the chance to rule the country.
She was addressing at women councillors' convention at Press Club Hyderabad today. This convention was organised by Women Councillors Network Sindh (PATTAN). She said that it was the duty of the lady councillors to create awareness among the women on social, political, health and educational issues and in certain cases female councillors could not fulfil their duties due to some flaws in local bodies system as compared to male councillors.
Ms. Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto said that she was not against the local bodies system but there were some defects in the system and due to large-scale corruption in local body institutions as such the interior Sindh looked worse than Moen-Jo-Daro. She said that we should fight against injustice and added that to bear injustice silently is more harmful than to commit injustice.
She said that the purpose of local bodies system was to empower the people at grass root level and especially women were supposed to be empowered but it did not happen in practical sense. Thus the present government has decided to make local bodies system more effective by removing its flaws.
She suggested the women to work within the limits prescribed by the religion and constitution and to go door to door to collect data and encourage women to get Computerised National Identity Cards to ensure their basic rights protected. She stressed upon the women councillors to create awareness among women especially village women about their rights as explained in Islam. She said that present government had initiated many programmes to empower women and to solve their problems and women complaint centres were working in Karachi, Hyderabad and other cities of the province to receive and address the problems of victim women.
The President Women Councillors National Network Bismillah Erum, General Secretary Huma Nawab, President NWFP Network Farhat Siddiq, Afroz Shoro, Ayaz Latif Palijo, Fauzia Ishrat, Ali Hassan Jatoi and others also addressed the convention. They demanded that discriminatory laws against the women should be abolished and local government system be continued because it was a political training school for women and has been proved as the nursery for the leadership of the women folk.