JAMMU & KASHMIR: A young woman from Srinagar, working on a consolidated basis in Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), has taken upon herself to provide sanitary pads to women and make them available in woman’s public washrooms.
Irfana Zargar is from Nowshera area of downtown Srinagar. She says after the death of her father in 2013, she decided to start an initiative for women and provide sanitary kits to women to ensure their menstrual hygiene. “My father would get sanitary pads for me from the market. After his death, I used cloth for the purpose for some time and then shifted to sanitary pads. I know many women don’t have the resources to purchase sanitary pads. I decided to provide sanitary pads and other items to the menstruating women in distress from my own savings,” she said.
Finding it difficult to go door-to-door to look for menstruating women in need of pads, Zargar decided to make the kit comprising sanitary pads, panties, antispasmodic drugs, hand washes and sanitizers available at women public washrooms.
She started off after she got a job in the grievance cell at SMC in 2014. “The job helped me in providing the sanitary kit to women. The job makes it easier for me to spend some amount from my salary on purchasing the sanitary pads and other items and provide them to women,” she said. “I do my social work after office hours, holidays and Sundays”.
She also keeps baby diapers available in these sanitary kits at women’s public washrooms. “I keep these items in a basket and hang it in the woman public toilets,” Zargar said. Zargar is now supplementing at least 15 female public washrooms in Srinagar with the safety kits named ‘Eva Safety Door’. She plans to cover all the public washrooms in Srinagar.
According to Zargar, a large number of women visit Srinagar every day for various reasons and face problems in accessing hygienic toilets with facilities for sanitary napkins and their safe disposal. “By making the sanitary kits available there, I want to help them in distress,” she said. Zargar is spending about `5,000 every month on the purchase of the sanitary pads. “I can afford only this much. I have been doing it on my own without any help from an NGO or any government agency,” she said.
After lockdowns, she got calls from distressed women and some anxious parents following which she delivered sanitary pads to them at their doorstep. “Since public washrooms remained closed due to lockdowns, I got calls from women in distress and delivered the sanitary kits to them. Some people even visited my house for these pads,” Zargar said.
She even made the sanitary pads available for women Covid-19 patients in a Srinagar hospital. Hygienic menstrual health, she said, is essential for women. “A woman can have so many issues in case of some unhygienic menstrual health.” She says women need to be made aware of menstrual health and an initiative needs to be taken by the authorities.
Zargar now intends to reach out to women in Leper Colony in Srinagar. “The people in Leper Colony are living a miserable life. I want to reach out to the women there and provide the kits to ensure their hygienic menstrual health. I always wanted to do something for my father. I hope this initiative will make him proud,” Zargar said.