SAHIWAL: The Sahiwal Ladies Club (SLC), located in Partab Bagh, needs revival to provide common women with recreational facilities.

The women demand the administration provide financial resources to make the club a vibrant body, accessible for all girls and women where they can engage in healthy social activities as the city lacks recreational facilities, designed exclusively for them. The city has more than 14 public parks and only one of them, Ladies and Children Park, Farid Town, is reserved for women since the ladies club is no more functional.

The history of the ladies club goes back to the partition. It was developed by Hindu women, who were among the elite of the city.

Waris Ansari, head of divisional cultural wing of the PPP, said Partab Bagh was used for all the religious Hindu celebrations, including Diwali and Basant. Besides, women used to have regular meetings here to discuss their issues and its ownership was shared by women community members, he added

After the partition, the ladies club was abandoned as the Muslims, due to their cultural constraints, did not allow their women to visit it for being tagged with Hindu identity and culture. In 1992, then deputy commissioner Naeem Khwaja constructed a new building of the ladies club. The women from the elite of the city were made its members and they started arranging functions on important occasions.

Nasir Iqbal, a worker at the ladies club for the last 50 years, said the members were from the elite women and wives of the high-ups who regularly held get-togethers.

“No efforts were made to include ordinary women in its organisational structure and it remained an exclusive domain of high class women,” Ansari added.

Mrs Zahida Rehman, who is club member for the last 24 years, said the ladies club gradually got dysfunctional and no activities were done there in the last one decade.

Currently, Partab Bagh land is being used for commercial purpose and the park has been reduced to two plots, having less than a few kanal land. The park land was being rented out by the tehsil municipal administration to private people, Mrs Najma Rani of Civil Line Colony claimed.

Many women that Dawn talked to demanded reactivation of the club, making it more accessible to the common working women. They demanded the district government allocate funds for the club so that it could be revived.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014