New Delhi:
Low-income single women from eleven states today urged the government to draft a special policy for them in order to provide "employment opportunities" and "skill development programs".
Ahead of their annual advisory committee meeting that is scheduled to be held on October 28 and 29, members of the 'National Forum for Single Women's Rights', highlighted issues that are important to all single women in the country.
"At present we have 122,520 single women members in nine states, but our struggle is to organize such women in each state of India and to have the Central government draft a special policy for them," said Nirmal Chandel, President of the National Forum and a widow from Himachal Pradesh.
Raising the issue of livelihood, another forum leader Savita Kamble, a widow from Maharashtra and a domestic worker, said single women who do not have opportunities for any skill development training to work outside home are forced to depend largely on casual unskilled labour for supporting themselves and their families.
"Government should create opportunities for skill enhancement and further education of single women and should waive off fees for open school and university courses for single women, so that they don't need to indulge in casual unskilled labor for supporting themselves and their families," Ms Kamble suggested.
Expressing their concern over the prevailing issue of farmer suicides which leaves behind hundreds of widow farmers, the forum demanded that the government should relax loans of these women farmers and also insisted that property be registered in their names.
"The outstanding loans of the deceased husband of the single woman farmer should be waived. The widow should not be responsible for paying the loan or interest amounts," Mr Chandel said.
"Land and Property Succession Acts for women must state that upon the death of the husband, the land and property gets registered in the name of the wife," Mr Chandel added.
Suhagini Tudu, Secretary of the Forum and a tribal from Jharkhand, drew attention to the lack of realization of women's right to land at the ground level.
"In Jharkhand, tribal women cannot own land in their own names and we are fighting to bring about a change in the law.
But even where women have the legal rights, we have seen that actual possession and control of land is a distant dream for many," she said