The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in collaboration with Women Political School (WPS) initiated capacity building of 28,000 women councillors to effectively deal with women employment issues.
For this purpose, a series of Training of Trainers (TOT) for 200 lead mentors (LM) and research analysts (RA) of WPS project across the country is underway. The first workshop of this series held in Quetta was attended by 32 LMs and RAs. Secretary, Social Welfare and Women Development, Dr Aftab Ahmad Jamal chaired the workshop.
In his inaugural address, Dr Aftab Jamal highlighted that Baloch woman in spite of hardships and cultural constraints have always been courageous enough to take on challenges successfully. Recently, the Prime Minister conferred Fatima Jinnah awards on quite a number of Baloch women, he said.
He said that Baloch women need support to prove that they are second to none in achieving economic prosperity. He appreciated the joint efforts of ILO and WPS for including women's employment issues into the training module and assured his ministry's support and co-operation in taking up this agenda at all forums.
In his welcome note, Saad Gilani, Project Officer WEC-PK informed about ILO's overall philosophy, its role in promoting International Labour Standards (ILS) and particularly highlighted some key initiatives of ILO's "Women Employment Concerns and Working Conditions (WEC-PK) Project".
The WEC-PK is a joint collaborative venture of ILO and Cida (Canadian International Development Agency).The project spans over 36 months and aims at enhancing quality and quantity of women in economic development, and for this purpose a variety of interventions are underway.