51,000 rural women demand extension of road development project

Women who worked under the government’s five year rural road development project  have urged the government to extend the scheme.   The ending of a government project has rendered 750 women jobless in the south-western district of Bagerhat as the authority concerned rules out any possibility of extension.   A total of 51,470 women engaged in the five-year Rural Development and Road Maintenance Programme (RERMP) of the Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) have been made unemployed around the country by the completion of the project on June 30.   The RERMP was launched across 64 districts in 2008 after cyclone Sidr played havoc in the country. The project under the government’s Food for Work initiative employed 10 local destitute women from each upazila of various districts to maintain rural connecting roads.   Instead of food, they did year-round road maintenance work for cash payment, a part of which was deposited as savings with the authorities.   LGED Chief Engineer Mohammad Wahidur Rahman said each of the women saved up to Tk75,000 over the five years, which is hoped will give them a chance to become economically self-reliant by getting engaged in income generating activities after completion of the project.   Monira Begum of Fatepur village, Sakhina Khatun of Kondola village and Kariman Begum of Rajapur village in Bagerhat Sadar upazila said although they had deposited Tk75,000 each over the last five years, they would now become jobless after the project.  They urged the government to extend the duration of the project because they believe the amount saved was not going to be enough for any income generating activity.   However, there were others like Bithika Biswas of Roy village under Chitalmari upazila who told UNB that they were planning to start own businesses with the Tk75,000  that they had saved while working on the project. Bithika joined the project in 2008 to do tree plantation and road maintenance works. She used to get a daily wage of Tk90 of which she spent Tk54 for daily expenditure while the remaining Tk36 was deposited in her bank account.    By this time, she had also received agricultural training on rearing of poultry and livestock and fish cultivation. The LGED chief engineer told UNB that a total of 51,470 women from 4,498 unions of all the upazilas of the country were employed under the project for five years.    The women workers in each union did maintenance work for 20 kilometres of roads on average. In total, they did maintenance work for 98,000km of roads and planted 2.25m trees in all the districts of the country.    The chief engineer said there was no scope for extending the duration of the project.