Chandigarh, June 25:- Another milestone in the ongoing process of social emancipation and economic empowerment of women in the Union Territory was added today with the inauguration of a Production Centre by the Punjab Governor and Administrator, Union Territory, Chandigarh, Gen. (Retd.) S.F. Rodrigues, PVSM VSM in Sector 19-D, here today. Set up by the Chandigarh Child & Women Development Corporation, this thoughtfully structured project will impart professional and training skills in various income generating ventures to our women-folk, with the focus on the disadvantaged sections of society to enable them to be economically independent and self-reliant.
Accompanied by Mrs. Jean Rodrigues, the guiding spirit behind this innovative project, General Rodrigues went round the facility and training class-rooms for cutting and tailoring, beauty culture, stitching, embroidery, dress designing and so on. They interacted with the women and girls engrossed in their training programmes and encouraged them to upgrade their knowledge and skills in different trades. He also interacted with the social activists and asked them to extend their support in this useful business enterprise with social objectives.
Emphasizing that women empowerment is the key to social transformation, General Rodrigues asked the Finance Secretary and Director Social Welfare to hire the services of professional and competent coaches to impart quality training to the trainee women in different courses. He mentioned that the services of Hawaldar Joginder Singh, a known expert in embroidery work may be requisitioned for equipping the girls in needle work skills. He also told the officers to tie up with the fashion designing institutes in the region and corporate & business houses, to help them in training programmes and for providing a platform to sell their products. He also stressed the need for a further strengthening of the support structure for training programmes in different trades and evolve a monitoring system to identify the bottlenecks with follow up corrective measures.
Another feature of this Project is the launching of the Child Helpline, to immediately give protection to the victims of child abuse incidents and follow up counseling services. The Administrator interacted with the professionals manning these services and asked them to evolve an efficient support structure and suggested the institution of a responsive system with linkages with the police authorities and other appropriate institution for helping the child and also through rehabilitation programmes. He told them to also complete documentation with a case history of every incident and harmonize the endeavour to give institutional & moral support to victims to help them cope.
The Finance Secretary, Mr. Sanjay Kumar and Director Social Welfare, Ms Amandeep Kaur, while giving a brief about the project said that with the launching of this project, all the women "skill development training programmes and product related activities" have been brought under one roof. It has started the production of 67 items including ladies garments, children wears with fashioned look, embroided towels, pillow covers and so on. The finished products would be put up for sale at Panchayat Bhavan (Kala Darpan), Sector 18, Chandigarh, a place especially earmarked for this purpose. There is a huge response to the various training programmes in
the production center and about 40 women are under going training in dress designing, 28 girls students in stitching and similarly in embroidery, beauty culture and other fields.
Senior officers of the Administration including Deputy Commissioner, Mr. R.K. Rao and a large number of social activists and members of NGOs attended the function. They assured to extend participation in making this production center a successful endeavour for empowering women of Union Territory.