Hoshiarpur women prepare homemade masks for villagers

Team L&M

A group of young women in GugwaalHaar village of Hoshiarpur, Punjab is working tirelessly to safeguard the residents of their village and those in the vicinity — workers and ration and food supply distributors — from Covid-19 infections by making and distributing face masks free of cost.

The Punjab State S&T Council (PSCST) Chandigarh, supported by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) under the societal programme for women which works on Technological Empowerment Of Women On Energy From Rural Biomass being implemented in the Talwara block of district Hoshiarpur, has launched a project under initiatives for the community in the scenario of Covid- 19.

The initiative took off on April 6, 2020 as the participating women made homemade cloth masks as per the instructions issued in the manual released by the office of Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. PSCST supported the group by providing necessary raw material for this initiative. Within 10 days, the group of women supplied more than 2,000 good quality masks in four villages near GugwaalHaar to migrant labour, villagers, small-time shopkeepers. The group is led by village sarpanch Narinder Singh.

“Crowd sourcing of homemade masks for general population is fast catching up as the awareness about mask-making and its use, aided by local leadership, has become widespread. This will prove to be a vital action in slowing and breaking the chain of transmission,” shared Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.