Team Herald
PANJIM: Goa has taken a lead in improving menstrual hygiene among female industrial workers as well as their school-going children with the launch of the Stri Sakhi Scheme, the first in the country.
Labour Department has taken the initiative to bear the capital cost for installing sanitary pad vending machines and incinerators as it aims to achieve 100 percent menstrual hygiene in the next two years.
Labour Minister Rohan Khaunte said the project has begun on a trial basis. “Vending machines/incinerators are installed at 20-25 locations on three months trial. In the next two years, we aim at 100 percent coverage across all industrial sectors, hotels, units under shops and establishments and other institutions. These places would be monitored by labour inspectors,” he said at on Thursday.
While a few major companies installed the machines on Women’s Day, the department has begun a survey to get an accurate number of female employees across all establishments. Simultaneously, machines would also be installed at educational institutions from high schools to colleges.
The department has also met representatives of associations from various industrial estates to explain the scheme and identify units where the concentration of women workforce is more, and availability of washrooms so the Goa Labour Welfare Board can procure and install these machines.
“The Goa Labour Welfare Board will bear the expenditure of the machines, but periodic replenishment will be done by the employer. It will be coin machine of Re 1. The employer will bear the cost of the sanitary pads and make them available to the workers at a subsidised rate of Re 1,” the minister further said.
The Welfare Board will also identify schools, colleges especially for children from the lower strata of society to benefit from the scheme. The Board will bear the cost of installation of the machines in the schools/colleges and in locations where it can benefit a cluster of small industrial units.
Khaunte said they are also trying to improve the situation at construction sites even as a survey of these areas have begun.
