25 August : A three day training of senior officers of Nagaland government on ‘Empowerment of Women’ began at Administrative Training Institute in Kohima today. Training on key issues such as Gender Rights and equity, Legal judicial system for women empowerment, Nagaland Women Empowerment Policy 2007 and economic empowerment of women through agri and allied sector will be imparted by six resource persons to Heads of Departments and senior officers from more than 20 departments during the training.
The Chairperson of the Nagaland Women Commission Sano Vamuzo, who inaugurated the training, has expressed gratitude to the state government for making all efforts towards sensitizing all concerned to the Nagaland women empowerment policy. She also thanked the ATI for taking the initiative for organizing the training for senior officers of the state government. Sano expressed hope that the training will create more awareness on the needs for upliftment of women and hoped that the three day training would come out with some action plans for removing gender gaps between men and women.
The NWC Chairperson also drew the attention of the participants to the key issues of neglect, oppression and suppression of legitimate rights of women by male folks in one way or the other. Stating that there is a need to give serious attention to the girl child’s education on equal footing with boy, Sano called for giving proper education beginning from pre-primary education. She said ‘given the right environment and space she will be able to contribute much more than what she is doing today’. She also appealed to government functionaries particularly dealing with rural development to be more transparent.
On the reservation issue for women the NWC Chairperson expressed her personal feeling that if women’s rights and their place in society are recognized, there is no need for reservation, ‘but since this is not so’, the need for reservation for women arises. Taking the opportunity, Sano gave a clarion appeal to the trainees ‘to own the problems women are facing today’ saying they are mothers, wives and sisters, who expect support and guide to steer through all the obstacles.