The state government is planning to launch a programme to provide sanitary napkins for economically poor women and generic medicines at one rupee.
“We have come up with a policy for generic medicine, for example a medicine like Paracetamol, will be available at the cost of one rupee and sanitary pads will cost one rupee per piece,” he said.
However, he said, “We won’t divulge much as we are still working on it.” According to Sangma, the government has taken two years to discuss on the programme.
He further said that the government is looking at technology of having biodegradable environment friendly sanitary napkins. The government has supported one such unit in Nongstoiñ by giving machines and encouraged them to expand further
“Once we have the scale and numbers and capacity then we will go ahead with the program,” he said.
Meanwhile, to empower women the government has set aside a gender budget of Rs 5,271 crore.
Presenting the budget in the House today, the Chief Minister acknowledged the contribution of women in economic growth and social progress. “Women are at the forefront of generating prosperity in Meghalaya’s countryside is evident from the sharp increase in the number of self-help groups in last the last five years. From just 60,000 women in 2018, the State’s SHG network today comprises of 4.37 lakh members,” he said.
He informed that women’s groups collectively have an accumulated corpus of more than Rs 700 crore. “Over the next four years, our objective is to create women’s enterprises with a total valuation of 1 billion US dollar. “I am allocating Rs 389 crore for 2024-25 for continued implementation of the SHG program,” he added
The Chief Minister said women have taken up successful enterprises in the primary and the service sectors and have been at the forefront of providing banking services in the rural areas as banking correspondents and bank sakhis. He said about 60 per cent of the FOCUS beneficiaries and CM-ELEVATE applicants are women.
“With structured support and handholding, the existing women’s networks of the state can generate about 1 lakh job opportunities,” he said.
The Chief Minister also said that since traditional women networks like Seng Kynthei organizations from the Khasi Hills and women’s groups from the Garo Hills have worked relentlessly to raise awareness on issues of women and child health, alcoholism and substance abuse and rural development the government will launch a new program for providing funding support and for structured engagement with traditional and new women’s networks.
