Bhairahawa, October 29

Girl Child Insurance campaign is gaining popularity in Omsatiya and Gaidahawa rural municipalities of Rupendehi.

Omsatiya Rural Municipality had launched the campaign last fiscal while Gaidahawa has started the campaign from this fiscal to uproot the dowry system and help reduce financial burden on parents while marrying off their daughters.

Omsatiya Rural Municipality Chair Hira Kewat said the rural municipality had launched girl child insurance scheme amounting to Rs 25,000 for up to 20  years of age if birth of the new born girl child was registered in  the rural municipality.

For the insurance premium, the rural municipality will provide Rs 20,000 and remaining Rs 5,000 will be added by parents or guardians. The accumulated insured amount will be handed over to parents for the marriage of daughters only after reaching 20 years of age. As many as 150 parents bought this insurance policy provided by the rural municipality in Omsatiya last year. The rural municipality had allocated one crore rupees for the same in the last fiscal while Rs 70 lakh has been earmarked for the current fiscal.

Similarly, Gaidahawa Rural Municipality has also launched the programme. The rural municipality allocated Rs 4,000,000 for the insurance in the current fiscal. Chair of the rural municipality Bachhu Kewat said the programme was launched to motivate parents to educate their daughters and prevent child marriage. He said the parents would not get the insured amount if their daughters got married before 20 years of age. However, he said that the parents would receive the amount if the girl in whose name the insurance policy was bought died before 20 years of age.