Working women demand hostels

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, November 18

The expansion of the city and its industries draws many professionals and job seekers from towns and villages on the city’s periphery and surrounding areas.

A considerable size of them are women, who say they are facing the problem of accommodation in the absence of adequate working women hostels. Most of such women are skilled and semi-skilled workers.

Undoubtedly, the share of floating population coming here to work and returning to their hometowns by dusk or weekend has grown with the passage of time. Women can stay in a safe environment while working in industrial units and could go to their houses on weekend, said Gurvinder Kaur from Gurdaspur. Employed with a travel agency sending students abroad, she said they required quality working women hostel having modern amenities.

Baljit Kaur of Dhariwal, 65 km from here, said, “Travelling consumes over three hours daily to reach the factory I work with.” She is a quality control in-charge. She said the wastage of time on travelling reflected eventually on her working schedule. Affordable hostel with a joint mess to curtail expenditure is the need of the hour, she added.

Women mostly are engaged in textile, pharmaceutical, rice shellers and other industrial units. They are given the task of rafugar, dying, segregation of fabric as per their quality, mending, stitching, office work, accounts, computer operation, etc. All of them are of the view that hostel could provide them security and safe transportation.