Pune couple distributes 35,000 sanitary napkins for free in lockdown
Mrunal Jadhav
Pune, July 22, 2020: Lockdown had badly hit the labourers in the city, who weren’t privileged to maintain social distancing sitting safely at concrete home and availability of essential needs. While many organisations came forward and distributed foodgrains to them, one aspect which remained overlooked was women’s health and hygiene.
In a bid to help women maintain their hygiene during menstruation in these difficult times, Dhanori-based couple Yogesh Singh Baveja (32) and his wife Gurpreet Baveja (32) distributed free sanitary pads during the lockdown to women labourers in Pune. Yogesh who is a manager in a finance company and Gurpreet, the manager in an IT company along with their friends Mahindra Singh and Amrita Bhagat had started distributing sanitary pads in the first week of April month.
The labourers have been facing many problems since the lockdown was imposed. Many citizens and organisations have donated money for them, to meet their daily needs.
Yogesh said, “labours were provided food but to keep these women healthy and safe, we decided to distribute sanitary pads.”
They have distributed a total of 35,000 sanitary pads in Pune. These Punekars applied for a loan of Rs 13 lakh and used the money to purchase sanitary pads. They stated that because food was easily available, they chose to take up this cause as maintaining the hygiene was necessary.
Yogesh said “ek chotisi bimari ek mahamari me ho jati. To avoid this, we started distributing pads for free. In this pandemic, if women hygiene is not maintained she may suffer from different health problems. Most of the women will ignore them.”
While distributing the sanitary pads, the couple realised the women labourers weren’t aware of the health and sanitation products. They stated many labourers checked the bag, they lacked the knowledge and education.
Gurpreet and Amrita explained these women the usage of sanitary pads. The group didn’t purchase sanitary napkins in bulk, instead whichever place they had visited to distribute they bought it from the local medical shops and distributed them.
Yogesh and his wife have expressed to continue their goodwill work of free distribution of sanitary pads for more women labourers. “Donating money is not enough, we should come forward and help the needy by providing them with the necessary products. Money won’t always solve all the problems which a small help can,” said Yogesh.
