Palpali Dhaka Association with the help of UKaid(सीप) has provided 3 month Dhaka weaving training to 50 participants under the project Partnership for Growth of Nepali Dhaka (PGND). This training has helped local women to learn Dhaka Weaving skill and provided employment to all 50 participants. Dhaka Weaving is a skilled based job mostly popular among the local women of Palpa district. The training started from 8th November 2020 and continued for 3 months and completed in 5th February 2021. There were 50 graduates from this training.
Among the 50 graduates, 49 of them were women. As the project priorities semi-literate youths, women, disadvantaged groups(DAGs) and people with disabilities (PwDs) as their beneficiaries, the project at its execution period of 3 years targets to provide training for 1500 individuals. Out of 50 trainees, 66% of beneficiaries were Janajatis, 18% Dalits and rest 16% others. One participant of the training falls under the category of PwDs.
Training has been conducted in Nine different member workshops of PDA in Palpa District. Trainee has been allocated based on their location to the nearest training location.
The curriculum for this training is designed such a way that participants will learn soft skills, financial literacy, Health and safety in addiction to the Dhaka weaving skills. All the participants of the training are now able to weave different levels of Dhaka as per difficulty and have good knowledge of finance and can use banking services. The financial literacy part of training was conducted with the partnership of NMB Bank where bank officials taught them advantages of using banking services and other financial knowledges. The duration for the training is 3 months and each participant will get NPR 13,450 /- per month (Government specified Minimum Wage of Nepal at 2020.) as training apprenticeship cost per month.
All the graduates of the training are currently working in different PDA member workshops in Palpa. 4 out of 50 graduates are interested in self-employment and are now in process of registering and setting up their own workshop and aims to provide employment to other through this workshop. Phool Maya Darji, training graduate, who is 49 years of age says “It was very difficult for me to earn living working in others home but this training has given me hope that my life won’t be as difficult as before. I am very happy to get selected in this training.”
There are many others who are happy and excited to get a chance to train for the job opportunity. This training has helped them to improve their living standard. They are currently working a full time Dhaka weaving job where they can earn more than government minimum wage as the wage rates of the Dhaka weaver is in process of revision by the Association. This has brought back hope for the weavers and factory owners and helped in revival of the Palpali Dhaka sector as a whole.
Respected Mayor of Tansen Municipality Mr. Ashok Kumar Shahi, explained at the training completion event that Palpa district has much more potential to provide large scale employment to locals in Dhaka weaving sector if we can promote Palpali Dhaka as a national pride of Nepal. He further said “Let’s make Tansen the city of Entrepreneurs.” This project PGND, is a Public-Private Partnership model project with stakeholders like PDA, UKaid(सीप), Lumbini Province Government and Tansen Municipality. The excitement and support from all the stakeholders has helped this project to achieve in greater goals.
The Training environment in all the training locations are COVID-19 safe. Special care is taken in training locations to provide safe and healthy training location to trainees. Masks, Sanitizers, PPEs has been provided time to time in training locations and social distancing has been taken seriously as COVID-19 can create risks if ignored.