SHANGLA: The participants at a seminar on Tuesday stressed the need for registration of women as voters by facilitating them in making their national identity cards.
Sustainable Development Society (SDS) arranged the public forum in Bisham, where local government members, NGOs’ representatives and social activists were in attendance.
“We are conducting sessions for awareness and identification of women still unregistered in 27 blocks of Shangla district. This campaign will continue till Sept 6 to register the targeted women,” Shazia Shabir, social mobiliser of SDS, said.
She said their volunteers were visiting door-to-door for identification of unregistered women and also holding awareness sessions and meetings for mobilisation and strengthening coordination among people, SDS teams and Nadra officials.
Ms Shabir said women in rural areas faced difficulties due to non-availability of CNICs. “We facilitate women by providing them with transportation, fee for CNICs and also pay for other expenditures, so that every unregistered woman could be registered with Nadra,” she added.
She said as per direction of ECP, 8,642 women voters would be registered till August in 27 selected blocks of 14 UCs for which 2,500 facilitation sessions will be arranged during the campaign.
Tehsil councillor Butyal, Ijaz Kamal assured the SDS team that he would facilitate them in registration process in the union council.
“As Shangla comprises of mountainous areas women face problems while coming to Nadra centres, but the mobile registration mechanism has eased their suffering,” he said.
Mohammad Zada, nazim Butyal-1 village, asked the SDS and Nadra teams to visit upper parts of Butyal UC where a large number of women were not yet registered as voters.
He said local government members should be taken on board before arranging the awareness sessions in their respective areas as it would help achieve the results.
