KTR pitches for separate manifesto for TS women

Hyderabad: The BRS working president KT Rama Rao on Sunday promised to bring a separate manifesto for women and asked the women to deliberate and come up with suggestions on the requirements.

The BRS leader was speaking in a programme ‘Future Forward Telangana’ ‘Women Ask KTR' on Sunday. He assured to start free shuttle services from metro stations for the convenience of passengers, especially at night. Rao recalled that the government established WE-Hub and four exclusive women's industrial parks, including Sultanpur, Nandigama, and Koheda. He also pointed out that 10 per cent of plots in industrial parks were earmarked for women in Telangana.

Talking about safety, Rao said that the government was drafting a cybercrime law. Telangana will be the first State to come up with such legislation, wherein the offender can be booked for outraging the modesty of an individual on social media. “People will definitely say freedom of expression was being curtailed, but it was not a licence to abuse,” Rama Rao said.

There are 100, 104, and 108 toll-free numbers where people can call for ambulances and fire engines. Likewise, an exclusive toll-free number was being planned for women to lodge any complaints. This would be monitored by the government, and the complaints would be routed to different departments, he said.

Rao stated that prior to 2014, there were reports of girl children being sold, young girls in the Old City being forced to marry old Arab nationals, and women struggling to get safe drinking water for their children in Nalgonda due to fluorosis. The government established 200 minority schools. Nearly 1.15 lakh students were pursuing education, and of these, 50,000 were young women. The State government spends about Rs 1.20 lakh on each student’s education, and as a result, the young women were excelling in different competitive exams, including NITs, IITs, and others, said Rao. With the State government focusing a lot on healthcare, institutional deliveries have increased from 31 per cent to 61 per cent. Infant and maternal mortality rates also came down substantially, he said. Telangana’s Streenidhi was worth emulating in other States. It is a non-banking financial corporation created by the State government in association with women's Self-Help Groups. He recalled that schemes like Kalyana Lakshmi and Women University were not promised in the manifesto, but the government delivered them.

The BRS leader said that the government was working with a private company to produce vaccines for women with negative blood groups since these women have a 14 per cent higher chance of losing blood and mortality rates during pregnancy. These vaccines will be administered to adolescent women, and Telangana would be the first State to come up with such an initiative, he said.