National Centre for Women Development (NCWD) says its 2020 budget will focus on creating more awareness on cancer and empower more women on various skills across the country.
The Director-General of the centre, Mrs Mary Ekpere-Eta, disclosed this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.
She said the centre’s proposed N7 billion 2020 budget would focus on creating massive awareness on cancer, particularly on the need for
regular medical check-up for early detection, treatment and management.
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She added that “we have a 2020 proposal of about N7 billion and we will be focusing on cancer awareness among others without losing sight of our usual training and various empowerment programmes.
“Our budget performance for the outgoing year is 100 per cent.”
According to her, the centre has been able to carry out massive campaign on promoting gender equality and girl child education, hence reducing vulnerability in the society.
She reiterated the centre’s commitment to continue to advocate for the inclusion of more women in government cabinets and other appointive positions in line with the 35 per cent Beijing affirmative action.
Ekpere-Eta said “inclusion of more women in governance would further aid in eliminating gender discrimination, ensure quality and human dignity to both men and women.
“There is need for women to participate in partisan politics so that we can achieve the 35 per cent affirmative action.”
The NCDC boss explained that the centre was collaborating with
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to collate data on the impact of
women’s
contributions to the nation’s economy for policy implementation.
“We keep data of women, petty traders, hawkers, artisans, all the vocational skill providers who contribute so much to the country, but it is not recorded.
“We are a research institute too, so we have all those documents. We will collaborate with NBS to know how many women are contributing to national growth so that we can work out ways to encourage them.
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“We will get the data, prepare it and give government for implementation. It is from there the government makes policies to drive the economy.”
Ekpere-Eta said that the centre recently trained over 800 females in vocational skills and various artisan programmes, including bricklaying, plumbing and generator repairs.
She reiterated the commitment of the centre toward women empowerment to make them financially independent.(NAN)
