Not many would know that the big engineering drawings made for use by engineers of BHEl for manufacturing turbines are folded and the user manuals are spiral bound by the members of the club run exclusively by the ladies and monitored by the wives of the top brass officers.
The BHEl ladies club of Haridwar has developed a self-sustaining model for diverse sections, be it screen printing for visiting and invitation cards or power loom for making cotton cloth dusters. A visit to the BHEl mahila welfare organisation shows ladies draped in yellow salwar kameez doing all sorts of jobs to assist the power generating public sector giant achieve its goals.
When the primary school run by education management board was merged into other senior school of BHEl, the entire school campus started looking barren. The patron of the BHEl ladies club Jyotsna Aswani decided to integrate the various training schools spread across several hectares of the township under one roof.
Only free medicine dispensary which runs during evening hours is run in different campus while weaving, print cutting, photostat, microfilming, lamination, envelop making for dispensary, masala centre, flour mill, computer training and many others have been brought under one roof.
“It was very difficult to monitor the entire activities scattered in different locations. Now we have utilised the space of the school. After flooring and shelving works, the centre became operational on 19 September 2016,” said the patron of the ladies club, Jyotsna. Introduction of biometric system for attendance has also enhanced the productivity of the centre, added the lady.
“The big drawings stretching to several pages need to be folded in A4 paper size format and inserted in a specific manner in file for easy access to the management. We do the work of coding and document filing,” said one of the ladies found busy with her work in micro film department with an air of pride.
The well-equipped computer centre run by the welfare organisation has nearly 100 students from across the district who come for various courses accredited by NIEIT (National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology). The centre is being run since 1989, told the computer centre in-charge Vivek Bhatnagar. He was the lone man seen working amongst the 70- odd lady staff members of the BHEl Mahila welfare organisation. For heavy load lifting, some male contract labourers are also employed. The welfare secretary of the club Sangeeta Mahra told The Pioneer that their computer centre had been selected in the past few years as an examination centre for the district.
Even the dusters used for cleaning machines and equipments in BHEl are woven by the handlooms run by widows associated with the welfare centre. “Our weaving centre has three handlooms and two power looms. Slowly, we would modify and shift all the power looms. Inferior quality cloth produced by these women is used for making dusters,” said Jyotsna Aswani.