Labour and Employment Ministry has taken up a welfare project entitled “Northern Areas Reduction of Poverty Initiative (NARI) for the women of the district for the term of three years until June, 2017. The main objective of the project is to increase awareness of the poor and helpless women and create working opportunities to them through providing them with need base training on garments, office sources said. Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) is implementing the project with the financial support of World Bank while the ministry is coordinating the project, sources said. Raising awareness and selecting beneficiaries programme, a component of the project, is being conducted by Shushilan, a national NGO, in 72 unions of all the seven upazilas in the district from September, 2014. Under this project, a total of 3000 women aged 18-24 and having at least eight passed certificates would be selected from the district and then, they would be sent to Dhaka, Chittagong and Pabna export processing zones (EPZ) for 3-month long training. The candidates would know all types of information about the training from union digital centres and could send their application for the training through UDCs or submit it to the employees of Shushilan. During the training period, no cost would be given to the authorities concerned; on the contrary, the trainees each would be provided Tk 2100 as allowance. After completing successful training, the trainees would be given certificates. Not only that, the concerned authority would take necessary measures to provide jobs for the trainees at the different garments industries of the EPZs. M. Ebadul Islam, district coordinator of Shushilan, said they had selected 250 female workers of the district to send them to training centres in the month of January for the first time after conducting campaign here. Divisional coordinator of Shushilan Abdul Alim said the similar programme was also going on in Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat district under Rangpur division. A target had been taken to bring as many as 7800 female workers of the districts as beneficiaries under the programme , he also said.
