RANGPUR, Sept 25, 2019 (BSS) – 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.
“I want to become a police officer,” she said thanking Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina for ensuring services of women in health, administration, army,
navy and air force, police, BGB, Ansar, diplomacy, judiciary and all other
fields.
Additional Divisional Commissioner (General) Md. Zakir Hossain said the
number of bicycle-rider female students continues increasing enhancing their
self-confidence along with spreading female education in Rangpur division
like across the country.