India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 31—Various women participants from different sectors in a webinar on “Women’s contribution in ‘new normal’ amid Corona pandemic” organised by the women’s wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) on August 29 highlighted the role played by women in facing the challenges posed by coronavirus pandemic in the country.
In her introductory speech, Dr. Fatima Tanveer, public relations secretary of the Delhi unit of the Jamaat, said that women had always played an important role in facing challenges during difficult times and during corona pandemic that brought immense change in individual and collective life of the people, women again performed their role with great responsibility.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Suhail Fatima, Dean, School of Unani Medical and Research & Medical Superintendent, Majeedia Unani Hospital at Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi, focussed on the health problems and mental trauma a large number of people, particularly women, suffered due to coronavirus and staying in isolation at home for a prolonged period to avoid getting infection. Dr. Fatima, who previously participated in several other webinars on the issue, spoke about how to manage health and overcome mental trauma through counselling the affected persons and consulting the doctors.
Dr. Fatima advised the newly married girls to avoid pregnancy during the coronavirus pandemic as the virus could infect the foetus and newborn also.
Ms Sucharita, associated with Lok Raj Sangathan and a teacher working with the Sardar Patel Senior Secondary School, speaking on ‘children’s education and corona pandemic’ said that the unplanned lockdown announced on March 24 all of a sudden brought school system from traditional platform to the digital platform, generating lot of challenges, particularly for women teachers.
She said that the students not having digital facilities with themselves like smartphones and internet connections were cut off from their education because of closure of regular schools and launch of teaching through online digital platform.
According to her, it affected more than one crore students studying in 15 lakh schools from primary to secondary level all across the country, besides 60 lakh others who were not able to attend formal school even before lockdown. Out of one crore students, she said 50 per cent happened to be girls.
Quoting from a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report released two days ago, she said that women teachers in India were affected in a big way due to online school during the coronavirus pandemic.
While women teachers had to work for long hours to prepare online teaching material, Sucharita said that they were under severe tension to deal with 50 to 100 students who joined online classes. They also faced pressure from school managements to complete the courses in time because teaching classes remained suspended for weeks togethers due to lockdown. This also affected health of the women teachers, she said.
She said that the women teachers also faced a big challenge in maintaining proper balance between their work life and responsibilities of the family life as their children stayed at home due to lockdown and husbands of most of the women teachers also worked from home. Many teachers, she said, also faced issues of lack of space at home to conduct their online classes.
On the top of that, she said that many women teachers were not getting their salaries for the last four months and a large number of non-teaching women staff like child care and cleaning staff have been laid off as the schools did not require their services due to closure of schools.
As schools could not fill up teaching vacancies for 2020-21 due to lockdown and schools also did not take services of adhoc and guest teachers, this increased further burden on existing teachers.
Mothers of the students also faced challenges about how to assist their sons and daughters in attending online classes and complete their home assignments.
Speaking on the theme of ‘Deepening of economic crisis on account of Covid 19’, Dr. Mehrunnisa Desai, principal at R J Tibrewal Commerce College, Ahmedabad, said that lockdown to prevent spread of coronavirus primarily affected poor people and daily wage and migrant workers unlike the rich people were able to manage the crisis.
She said that daily workers faced very severe problems due to lockdown as the government did not offer adequate assistance. Whatever help reached them was from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) only but that too was not enough.
She said that the migrant workers initially left for their native places due to sudden loss of jobs in cities where they worked. However, there did not find any job opportunity in their native places also and hence, they have started returning to the cities where they worked previously. Unfortunately, cases of coronavirus have now increased tremendously making India Number One country in the world incidence of corona infections, putting everybody at grave risk, particularly, the workers and adversely affecting the operation of industries and businesses again.
Speaking o ‘lack of humanism during corona pandemic’, Dr. Saeedunnia, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, Jamia Hamdard, said overload of information about corona circulated on social media grately impacted economy and healthcare system.
Stating that there was abnormal behaviour witnessed all over the globe due to panic created by lot of misinformation about corona, she said that in India accused Tablighi Jamaat and, indirectly Muslims, of being spreader of coronavirus while the fact is that corona spread all over the world from China.
“We became so much inhuman and illogical that not only the corporates and business houses laid off their staff and cut the salaries of the rest, even individuals did not pay the salaries of their housemaids and security guards for the number of days they were absent from duty due to lockdown and restrictions on movement”, she stated.
She said this was “panic behaviour” and indicated “lack of humanism”.
In hospitals, she said that VIPs were kept in ICUs simply because they could pay huge bills though they did not require to admitted in ICUs while poor people requiring ventilator support were kept in wards with no ventilator facility. She said in countries like US and Hong Kong, people even fought over buying of essential goods from stores and malls because they wanted to hoard it as nobody knew how long would lockdown continue.
Referring to Hadith(statement of the Prophet Mohammed) in which the Prophet has directed people not to leave the place where a pandemic has broken out, Dr. Saeedunnisa said that this directive of the Prophet could have been used to confine people at their respective places and prevent them from leaving for their distant native places to check the spread of the virus but unfortunately, the national failed in it.
Urging people to imbibe the teachings of Islam in such a situation, she said if one lost his life in a pandemic, one attained the status of martyrdom as per Islamic teachings and it was charity in a good cause if one lost his wealth in such a situation.
Mrs Shaista Rafat, member of the Central Advisory Committee of the JIH women’s wing, in her concluding address, said that the women faced lot problem during the pandemic and they needed to turn to Allah to face and solve the problems.
Mrs Sadia Yasmeen proposed a vote of thanks.
