Hyderabad: Lashing out at the government for distributing sub-standard sarees, a woman says ‘even beggars don’t wear such sarees’. ‘Shall we wear such cheap sarees on the festival’, she said. She feels it is an insult to women. Don’t we have any respect, she asked.
It must be noted that women from various places staged protests against the cheap quality sarees given to them by the government. At several places women indulged in verbal spat with people’s representatives on the quality of sarees. At some places women boycotted the saree distribution programme as mark of protest.
Women criticised the Chief Minister, K Chandrashekhar Rao, for failing to give them the handloom sarees, which he promised. They were unhappy with the gift given to them by the government.
As reported by Hindustan Times, instances of women rejecting the sarees at the fair price shop counters, burning them on the roads, cleaning vehicles with the gifted sarees and throwing them into dustbins have been reported from different parts of Telangana. It quoted a woman as saying “We skipped today’s work, which would have fetched us a daily wage of over Rs 400, and stood in queues before the fair price shops for hours hoping to get some nice sarees for the Bathukamma festival. But we were thoroughly disappointed over the quality of the polyester sarees, which does not cost even Rs 50-Rs 60 each. It is not worth even for cleaning floors. KCR should not have taken up the scheme at all, rather than insulting us with the poor quality of sarees.”