Agriculture, farming sector: Telenor, PLDDB to make efforts to enhance women participation

Pakistan's foremost telecom and digital services provider, Telenor Pakistan, has joined forces with Punjab Livestock & Dairy Development Board (PLDDB) to enhance women participation in agriculture and farming sector. The collaboration will promote awareness on nutrition, dairy, livestock, agriculture and livelihood related issues through Telenor Pakistan's communication platformin the province of Punjab.
Under the agreement, Telenor Pakistan will launch a dedicated IVR helpline on its mobile agriculture service Khushaal Zamindar for female farmers to sensitise them about making smart choices in order to maximise their revenues from agriculture and farming. The free-of-cost service will be initially launched in five districts of Punjab to gauge the impact and will be subsequently extended to other parts of the province.
Currently about 20 percent of the 2.5 million Khushaal Zamindar users are females. Telenor and PLDDB aim to ensure further uptake through the females-centric helpline which will provide female farmers localized, contextualized and customised information about livestock, health and nutritional requirements. Through the simple and user-friendly service, the female farmers will just need to dial 7272-51 to access the relevant information, a number where 51 denotes the percentage of women population of the country.
In view of multiple social barriers that resist technology uptake for women, Telenor Pakistan and PLDDB will organise multiple female-only live shows to foster awareness about the usefulness of mobile technology vis-a-vis the agricultural growth. Female farmers will be able to call and ask questions to access real-time information from female agriculture experts and nutritionists at the show.
"An overwhelming majority of women, about 72 percent, is in one way or the other associated with the agricultural sector whose contributions go unnoticed and unappreciated," said Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO, Telenor Pakistan. "We are collaborating with PLDDB to empower them so they can play a more significant and impactful role in the larger economy.-PR