By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi on Tuesday asked the Chairman of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to play his role in ensuring the protection and promotion of women’s rights, particularly their right to inheritance.
Talking to Chairman CII Dr. Qibla Ayaz, here at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the president said CII could play significant role, through Ulema and prayer leaders, to address the cultural hindrances faced by women in Pakistan with regard to their social and economic rights.
The President stated that the religion Islam had granted social and economic rights to women but unfortunately the cultural hindrances kept them deprived of their rights. He said the government had enacted a law to protect women’s property rights and ensure that such rights are not violated.
He underscored the need for sensitizing the people about the rights of women particularly their rights to inheritance and urged CII to play its role in creating awareness in this regard by using the services of Ulema and Pesh-Imams.
The President said that no society could progress without the economic inclusion of women and he emphasized that women needed to be empowered by granting them their full rights so that they could play their role in socio-economic development of the country.
The President said he had asked the concerned quarters to make arrangements for the tele-health program for women to guide them about health problems. The President congratulated Dr. Qibla Ayaz on his appointment as Chairman CII and advised him to prepare a vision, and roadmap and set time-lines for achieving the objectives.
The President acceded to the request of Chairman CII to hold a virtual conference with Ulema to chalk out a strategy for creating awareness among people about the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Qibla Ayaz assured the President of Ulema’s cooperation to support his efforts about the empowerment of women and awareness on health-related issues.
Earlier, President Dr. Arif Alvi, on Saturday, appealed the masses to determinedly adopt precautionary measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19.
He made these remarks while chairing a meeting held here at Sindh Governor House to deliberate upon the situation owing to third wave of Coronavirus and implementation of precautionary measures.
Governor Sindh Imran Ismail, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special initiative Asad Umer, Federal minister for Maritime Affairs Ali Hyder Zaidi, Senator Saifullah Abro, Member National Assembly Jai Parkash, Opposition leader in Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Shaikh, Members Provincial Assembly Firdous Shamim Naqvi, Khuram Sherzaman, Bilal Gaffar and others attended the meeting.
The rapidly spreading third wave of COVID-19 was more lethal and needed wider adoption of precautionary steps by masses, Dr. Arif Alvi maintained saying that government required cooperation by general public to deal with the situation. “Adopting a few safeguards could save lives”, he said.
Federal minister of Planning briefed the meeting in detail regarding spread of third wave of coronavirus, measures taken by government for implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and import of vaccines.
