Kathmandu, July 31

Participants attending the parliamentary committee meeting held at Singha Durbar today spoke of the need to further empower National Women Commission and spread its wings across every nook and corner of the country.

At the deliberation held in the meeting of Women, Children, Senior Citizens and Social Welfare Committee on the Bill to amend and integrate the existing laws on NWC’s duties, responsibilities and rights-2016, committee President Ranju Kumari Jha asserted that the commission be made more powerful in the wake of obtaining constitutional status. She also pledged to make the commission more women-friendly. The commission’s Acting Chairperson Bhagwati Ghimire argued that the Act should not be endorsed without amendment as it could clamp down the commission’s rights and responsibilities. “The Act should enable the commission be more high-powered,” she stated.

Secretary at the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Kamalshali Ghimire, assured that the Act relating to the commission would be more participatory compared to the past and the bill would incorporate the provisions as stipulated in the constitution.

Lawmakers Jit Bahadur Gautam, Rukmani Chaudhary, Madhu Gurung, among others, said the commission could not work adequately on issues of women and underlined the need to make the bill more women-friendly. They stressed the need to form commissions at the local level in the light of growing cases of violence against women at the local level.