PANAJI
Pacheco Fernandes, accounts officer, Goa Labour Welfare Board, has informed that details are being worked on to ensure that sanitary pads dispensing machines are installed in industrial estates from April 1.
These machines are aimed at providing free sanitary pads to poor women workers, who work in the factories at industrial estates and who don’t find sanitary pads affordable.
Fernandes said, “In the industrial estates, we are thinking of installing such dispensing machines in the toilets of the factories. We are planning the scheme in such a way that Goa Labour Welfare Board will have to spend money on just buying the dispensing and incinerator machines for sanitary pads. We will request the companies in the industrial estates to provide sanitary pads for free to women workers as a part of their corporate social responsibility programme.”
He continued, “When it comes to dispensing the sanitary pads, we have three options. One, we can give RFID cards to women workers and fix a limit on how many sanitary pads can be dispensed in a week. Two, we may have a system, wherein the dispensing machine will dispense sanitary pads by giving it a missed call by women workers from their mobile phones. Three, we are even thinking of giving dummy coins to women workers, which can be inserted in the machine to get sanitary pads. We are yet to finalise on these options.”
Last week Labour Minister, Rohan Khaunte, had announced that soon the state government will install sanitary pads dispensing machines at industrial estates, construction sites and also at government schools.
Both GLWB and Goa Building & Other Construction Workers Board will together ensure that sanitary pads dispensing machines are installed as announced by Khaunte.
As far as industrial estates are concerned, implementing the scheme will not be very difficult because such dispensing machines can be installed in the toilets of the factories.
Fernandes said, “We are still thinking how to implement this scheme at construction sites and market areas. We will have to do a survey of how many women work in a particular market area before installing a machine there.”
