Islamabad-Women in Distress and Detention Fund (WDDF), established in 1996 to facilitate women in need of legal aid and assistance was still facing hindrance for providing relief to deserving women.
The `Fund’ was lingering on due to changes in its house of business rules since its inception. According to the latest amendment in the Act, National Assembly standing committee on human rights has approved substitution of word ‘female with women’ in clause 2, in para (b) and (d) of sub-clause (i) the Act of WDDF.
According to original draft of the Act, the definition of the fund was `women in distress and detention’ means female or a class of females in need of financial assistance to alleviate her or their miseries due to detention, litigation or for similar connected matters’, which has now replaced the word female with women.
The fund which currently contains more than Rs46 million remained inactive for last 21 years due to various legal issues putting on back foot the real purpose of the Act.
But rather than serving the prime objective of facilitating women, the Fund was still in doldrums due to minor changes in its functional procedure ignoring the agony of women awaiting relief from the government on their issues.
Earlier, the fund was delayed because of an amendment was made in the Act of fund reducing its number of board members from 19 to 9 besides awarding the administrative power for implementation of the Act to Human Rights Wing which was first given the status of a federal ministry and then converted into a wing of the Ministry of Law Justice and Human Rights.
Considering its importance, Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has yet again converted the wing into a ministry on December 2, 2015.
Women at grass root level who are still ignorant with these legalities are waiting for functioning of the fund to be benefitted with the relief announced in the WDDF.