Khost women benefit from TLO livelihood assistance

KHOST CITY (Pajhwok): Impoverished women heads of families in southeastern Khost and Paktia provinces on Wednesday urged donors to help address their financial woes.

The Tribal Liaison Office (TLO) has launched a programme to assist widows and poor women with setting up cattle farms as a sustained source of income.

Under the programme, women are trained on goat and cattle and poultry farming. Poultry farms have been established for nearly 100 widows in in the two provinces.

A TLOofficial in Khost, Nadia Bawari, told Pajhwok Afghan News they wanted to provide assistance to the needy women and widows in the area of livestock farming.

“They process milk into yogurt and butter, but they lack a proper arrangement for selling their products. We plan to boost their revenue with home-made dairy products,” she said.

Establishing poultry farms for women and proper animal husbandrytraining were among the organisation’s priorities, she added.

Dr. Azhar, TLO head for Khost, said they had provided around 100 women with chickens in the province. Each woman has been given 100 chickens under the programme, which is being expanded to other parts of the province.

“This is 10 years programme, which is being run on a trial basis in the first year. If it produces good results, we will extend the programme to 23 districts of Paktia and Khost,” he explained.

Currently, the programme is being implemented with financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Mirzaka, Zazai Aryub, Dand-i-Patan districts of Paktia and Gurbaz, Tanai and Zazai Maidan districts of Khost.

Wrikhmina, for whom TLO has set up a poultry farm in Gurbaz district,called the assistance effective to some extent. She runs the farm inside her home.

“They gave us a total of 90 hens and 10 cocks, with eight bags of chicken feed. The organisation also takes care of disease control and I feed the chickens twice a day,” she said.

Although the farm solves some of her family problems, she asked donor agencies for greater assistanceto the needy women, including widows.

Another widow from Tanai district, Gul Zari, runs a farm of goatsinstead of poultry farming.Sheris happy with assistance, which would help meet her needs to some extent.

“We sell yogurt, but our two cows don’t produce enough of it to resolve all our economic problems. We ask the government and donors to pay more attention to women like us,” she said.

Meanwhile, Khost Women’s Network Chairperson Zeba Barakzai voiced her concernat the poor financial condition of the women responsible for meeting family needs.

She hit out at the government for not taking meaningful steps for boosting poor women’s income and failing to implement any long-term programmes.

myn/mud