By the women, for the women

Laila village launches safety-feel free sanitary napkins

Launching the sanitary napkin, ZP chief lauded the efforts of the Gram Panchayat of bringing a product to the market exclusively for women, produced by women.

“Apart from being a project of great importance at the village-level, it is a project which has the potential to bring empowerment of women,” she said.

Zilla Panchayat CEO Dr K N Vijayprakash said that the entire project is aimed at bringing culture of hygiene among rural women and young girls. “We are not here to compete with any major brand in the market. Our aim is to inculcate the culture of hygiene among the rural women and students and hence the product will be made available at a very subsidised price,” he said adding that the Panchayat has trained as many as seven women from Laila village (majority of who were beedi workers, now identifying themselves with Isiri SHG) in sanitary pad production.

The Panchayat has set up a napkin production unit at a cost of Rs 7.33 lakh, of which Rs 4.33 lakh was provided by  National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) while the rest was taken from the revolving fund of Isiri Self Help Group.

The team of women were trained by Kaveri Matha Trust (KMT) in Piriyapatna for couple of months. The team, which is capable of producing 350-450 napkins per day, has already produced more than 5,000 pieces.  Safety – feel free is priced at Rs 15 per pack of five pieces, but the GP has plans of reducing the price to Rs 12 on bulk purchase for hostels, schools and hospitals.

KMT Director P Saldanha said that the quality of the napkin is on par with the ones available in the market. “It can hold about 50 ml liquid at once. The napkin is produced using cotton derived from wood pulp and is safe as there are no harmful chemicals used in it,” he said.

MLA Vasanth Bangera presided over the programme. Chief Planning Officer Abdul Nasir, Total Sanitation Officer Manjula, Laila PDO Prakash Shetty, President Sudhakar among others were present.