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Govt mulls providing healthcare, electricity to poor women

Star Business Report
The government is mulling mapping of the poor to provide them with exclusive services like healthcare and electricity facilities, Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, the prime minister's energy adviser, has said.
“We're trying to map the poor...including the women who are more vulnerable among the poor," he said addressing as chief guest the inauguration of a three-day workshop in Dhaka yesterday.
The World Bank in partnership with the Rural Electrification Board organised the workshop on 'gender and energy capacity building for South Asia' at Sonargaon Hotel.
For instance, the adviser said, the community clinics with solar energy systems across the country could be used for other purposes like providing
electricity facilities besides healthcare for the poor.
"This has to be done in a decentralised system," Chowdhury told the workshop. Representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are attending it.
Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury said women largely depend on power for food and healthcare, but they are discriminated in the development processes. Though solar energy is becoming popular, it is quite costly and the poor cannot afford it, he noted.
Chowdhury also pointed out that even when rural areas are brought under electrification, the poor are deprived of it. "Power really empowers people and therefore it should be looked from the perspective of rights," he said.
World Bank's Country Director Ellen Goldstein said energy has multiple effects on all millennium development
goals, clean household fuel improves indoor air pollution and reduces the rate of child and maternal mortality.
However, women are usually underrepresented and often absent in strategy formulation and project related consultations, design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation processes, she said.
The issue needs to be addressed for equitable development, Goldstein said, adding that they have taken a rural electrification project by renewable energy under which nearly 500,000 households use solar home systems, manufactured by women. That is a good success and could be replicated elsewhere, she said.
Kwawn Gaba, World Bank's energy specialist for South Asia, and Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, the REB chairman, also spoke.