Keeping in mind the poor coverage of rural women in Himachal Pradesh in sanitary campaigns, especially in Sirmaur district, the district administration has engaged women self-help groups to promote use of sanitary napkins in rural areas.

The district administration has come up with a unique project where the women self-help groups are being provided sanitary napkin making machines.

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The women are further being trained to increase the usage of sanitary napkins amongst the women, especially in the rural areas.

The initiative has been started by Deputy Commissioner Sirmaur, Lalit Jain who marked the functioning of one such project at Navada village near Ponta Sahib on Saturday.

“Though there are a number of programmes that are aimed at providing sanitary napkins to young girls, yet the coverage amongst the rural ladies was dismal. We decided that once sanitary napkin making becomes a profitable business for a group of local ladies, they would not only use these themselves but also motivates their peers,” Jain told The Statesman.

The administration has started a pilot project involving women self-help group of 8 women which is headed by a Mahila Mandal Pradhan.

The village Mahila Mandal Bhawan is being used for this micro unit and the project cost around Rs 3 lakhs whose expenses were met by the district administration.

Jain said the administration plans to sell these napkins at very nominal cost of Rs 4 to the health authorities for which talks are under way.

In addition, it has been decided that these napkins, produced under the pilot project, would be made available at the ration shops as the footfall of women is maximum in these shops.

For the ladies who are making these napkins, the supply would be free of cost.

The administration will also provide free napkins to 100 girls in local government school of the area.

“The self-help groups (SHG) have come up as a long way to fight rural poverty especially where local administration has given leadership,” he added.

It is worthwhile to mention here some of the innovative SHGs (with the help of district administration) had engaged in making leaf plates of pattal and had already supplied one lakhs such plates for various community kitchen programmes.

The pattal (leaf plates) making initiative had become a huge success as the SHGs had received an order of over 3 lakh such plates and the demand is growing with each day as the government had imposed ban on thermocol plates.

The district administration is mulling to procure and install hi-tech machines for making leaf plates to meet the growing demand as the SHGs are only able to make around 1,000-2,000 leaf plates every day.