Female students establishing gender parity in Rangpur
BSS, Rangpur
Hundreds of school and college going bicycle rider female students are establishing gender parity coming come out from social barriers and superstition in all eight districts of Rangpur division.
Mostly belonging to low-income group families, female students are going to schools and colleges and coming back homes riding on bicycles twice daily from three to six kilometer distances with full confidence in minds.
Talking to BSS, bicyclist female students of different educational institutions said they believe that the nation cannot achieve its development goals without mainstreaming the girl children equally at all levels in the national life.
Overcoming social odds and curses, they are giving a descent look to the surrounding nature while riding bicycles in groups on the rural and suburban roads in all eight districts of Rangpur division on their ways to their institutions and coming back homes.
Bicycle rider students Rabeya Moni, Kamini Akhter and Sathi Begum of class nine, Chandni Begum of class ten of Babu Khan High School in Rangpur said they feel proud of going to their school and coming back homes riding on bicycles. Female students Ferdousi Akhter, Zannatul Ferdous and Nargis Pervin of class ten of Chondipur Model High School in the outskirts of the divisional city termed financial hardships in their families as barrier to go to schools by rickshaws.
After getting bicycles, we are easily going to schools regularly as our farm-labourer parents somehow purchased the same for us, said Zannatul Ferdous.
The bicycles are also helping our parents, who are mostly marginal farmers or farm-labourers, by saving Taka 40 to 70 daily needed for them to come to school and return home by rickshaws or auto rickshaws, said Kamini Akhter. Talking to BSS, female students of erstwhile Jamaldaho Balapukur, Baro Khenjir Mujib Indranagar and Bhotbari enclaves in Patgram upazila of Lalmonirhat district expressed similar views.
Expressing her feeling after her poor father purchased a bicycle for her, female student Abida Sultana said she is easily going to school and returning home with her other classmates without any transport cost.
Like Abida Sultana, female students Sumaiya and Rakhi Moni said bicycles are assisting them as they live in remote erstwhile enclaves of Patgram upazila, about two to four kilometers off from their schools. Like many other places, a unique scene of bicycle-rider female students is visible daily when they cross Mirpara point, just one-kilometer off from Boda upazila town, on the 20-km long Boda-Panchpeer road in Panchagarh district.
The confident female students of Boda Pilot Girls High School cross the point riding bicycles twice a day from eight to ten kilometer distances. Most of them belong to the low-income group families of Mirpara, Sarkerpara, Shomsher Nagar, Kumarpara, Senpara, Dangapara, Baniapara, Hindu Sarderpara, Pramanik Para and other villages in Boda upazila.
School students Noorjahan, Rehana Begum, Aroti Rani, Kalpona Rani and Malini Roy of these villages said they would not be able to go to their school if their parents would not purchase bicycles for them.
We want to be well-educated to build our careers before engaging ourselves in building a developed Bangladesh as envisioned by our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said bicycle rider student of the school Moslema Begum.
An intermediate second-year student of Balorampur Model College in Atwari upazila of Panchagarh Sadiya Afrin said she is going to her college and coming back home with her other classmates daily riding on bicycles in groups.
