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The gender empowerment bill is an approved bill to be passed into law in order to boost the promotion of gender equality.
According to the Minister of Gender and Children Affairs, Manty Tarawalli, the objectives of this bill is to increase the percentage of women in elective and appointive positions, to promote gender equality, to increase economic empowerment for women. He said that they are looking into implementing the minimum of 30% either gender because there is only 12% of women representation in the parliament whiles the men are in lion numbers, so it will be fair to at least have 30% of each gender representation.
“The bill covers what we call reserve seat. It is a woman only seat. In a particular district there will be reserved seats for only women candidates. Only women will contest for those seats so at the end of the day a woman will be the winner because no man will be allowed to contest in that particular seat. The bill will propose to look into that through PPRC, political parties, council of paramount chiefs and also civil societies who related to elections, to come up with a formular, for instance if Kailahun have ten constituencies, how they will arrive to reserve three out of that ten for only women candidates” he says.
He said as the ministry of gender and children affairs, they are not interested in what party wins but are interested in women emerging as winners in those three reserved seats. He added that these reserved seats will be rotational to different constituencies in every election. The minister affirmed that for every appointing position which appointment is done by the president, any appointment by the president will be within the minimum 30% of the either gender.
The minister assures women that ones this bill becomes law, there will be monitoring mechanism in which they will hold stakeholders accountable to ensure that this law is implemented.
