Talibani laws push widows to poverty !

Employment opportunities for women taken away !

London (UK) – The Taliban took over power about a year and a half ago in Afghanistan, endangering its sovereignty. In 2018, about 72% of people were living in poverty. Now, 97% of people live in poverty. Various laws passed against the freedom of women have almost deprived them of employment opportunities. Families surviving on income earned by women are becoming non-existent. Widows are getting pushed down to gross poverty. The above shocking information was given by professor Nitya Rao of East Anglia University, England.

Prof. Rao says in her article, 

1. Restrictions imposed on women for working in international and national organisations and they are going to public places have reduced their opportunities for employment.  Earlier, 10% of educated women in Afghanistan used to work at the offices of national or international organisations to support their children.

2. If women were less educated, they used to get formal or informal jobs earlier including housemaids, baking bread, washing clothes, cleaning wash-rooms, babysitting, etc., and in rural communities, rearing small livestock, and helping in farming.

3. Now, unmarried women and widows are left with no means of earning money. There are thousands of families where men in the families have been killed in either war or got injured according to some local reports; therefore, women are running the families.

4. Ahmad, a former professor working in Afghanistan, said that he had started collecting funds to help poor families after Corona pandemic. The temperature had fallen below 25 degrees in the last month. His friends, staying abroad, sent funds for the widows to survive in the severe cold conditions so that they could get coal and keep their homes warm.

5. Prohibition of women from having social contact has increased their insecurity as far as their need for food is concerned. Taliban has imposed a ban on the important fields generating employment such as beauty parlours, and sports centres for women. In such an overall situation, the cases of severe hunger and malnutrition have increased among women as well as men.

6. Women used to get a monthly allowance from the State Ministry of Martyrs and Disabled Affairs during the earlier democratic Government. The Taliban Government has stopped even this allowance. All the jobs given to the handicapped, have now been given to the Taliban’s supporters; therefore, many families have no alternative but to beg on the streets.

7. There are several malnourished families who are struggling to find their next meal.

Editorial viewpoint   

The activists who are otherwise making noise about Hindus traditions as against women’s empowerment have no guts to say anything about oppression by the Taliban ! It shows their double standards !