ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government has agreed to replicate three initiatives of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to address civic issues by providing planned graveyards, curbing violence against women and giving opportunity to worl(ing women to have their own mode of travelling.

According to Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on PM`s Strategic ReformsInitiatives(PMSRI)Salman Sufi, the three initiatives are Shehr-iKhamoshan (well-maintained graveyards), training and provision of motorbikes to deserving working women under the Women On Wheels (WOW) programme and establishing centres on Violence Against Women (VAW).

The initiatives will be extended to all over the country with the assistance of provincial governments and initially they are being launched in Punjab and Sindh.

`Punjab and Sindh have been taken on board and they are jointly implementing the initiatives with the PMSRI,` he added.

Appreciating the PM`s initiatives, chief ministers Syed Murad Ali Shah of Sindh and Hamza Shehbaz of Punjab have called meetings of the committees on PM`s strategic reforms for implementing the relevant projects.

In this regard, a committee was constituted and notified by the government of Sindh on June 7 to supervise and finalise modalities/roadmap for initiating and implementing the initiatives.

A source said negotiations were under way with the government of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for extending the initiatives to these provinces. `Letters have also been written to the governments of Balochistan and KP for rolling outthe PM`s initiatives,` the source added.

A VAW centre has already been set up in Multan and work is under way to establish such a centre in Larkana, Sindh, which is likely to be completed by November and will become functional in December. The centre will provide all health, legal and shelter-related facilities to the marginalised women who are in need of help or a victim of any sort of harassment.

The Shehr-i-Khamoshan Authority was established in Punjab in 2016 and Shehbaz Sharif, who was chief minister at the time, ordered identifying the areas for graveyards in 36 districts.

Planned and well-maintained graveyards had already been established in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad and Sargodha when Mr Sharif was serving as the chief minister of Punjab. One such graveyard is under construction in Rawalpindi.

The project is under way in Sindh as its PC-I has been prepared and an area in Karachi has been identified for the purpose. `Preliminary work, including the identification of premises and advertisement by the Sindh government, will be completed in a week and the formal launch of the programme will take place in two weeks,` the source added.

Under the WOW initiative, over 30,000 women have been trained in Punjab and now the programme is being introduced in Sindh. The programme is believed to be a key intervention for women emancipation to encourage them to have their own motorbikes.

The sourcesaidthatundertheprogramme, working women like polio workers, teachers, health workers and petty business women would be trained and after getting driving licence they would be given motorbikes free of cost.