INNOVATIVE WORK BY CIWCE SELECTED FOR PRESTIGIOUS TECH AWARD

On November 09, 2005 the Tech Museum of Innovations based in San Jose California USA gave away the highly prestigious Tech Award for Innovations benefiting Humanity for the year 2005. For the first time in the history of this Award a Pakistani, Mr. Saeed Awan Director of Centre for the Improvement of Working Conditions & Environment (CIWCE) Lahore was declared as the Laureate. He was also declared as the best Laureate of all in his category and also received a cash prize of US$ 50000. An international panel of judges from Santa Clara University in California carefully reviewed nominations from 80 countries for over 560 innovations and selected the work of Mr. Saeed Awan. Among the other winners were top US and European academic and business entities and inventors including MIT, AMD, Oxford University Orasure. It was appreciated here a lot that an organization from government sector with no budget at all had won the award.

 

The Award was given in grand gala function held in San Jose California and was attended by over 1100 top business leaders, academics and philanthropists of USA including Chairmen of Intel Corporation, executives of Microsoft, Accensure, Agilent Technologies, Knight Ridder etc.

Mr. Awan was invited to speak at prestigious American public policy and academic forums like Stanford University, Berkeley, World Affairs Council, Google Foundation and the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

This Award is given to innovators and visionaries from around the world who are applying technology to profoundly improve the human conditions in the categories of education, equality, environment, health, and economic development. Mr. Awan has won the Equality Award.

The Award has been given to Mr. Saeed Awan on designing a carpet weaving loom, which significantly reduces the health and safety hazards of the carpet weavers and enhances their productivity and helps in the fight against hazardous child labour in this sector. (See the details of loom in the box). The CIWCE team under supervision of Mr. Saeed Awan carried out a study on the health and other hazards faced by the carpet weavers particularly the children. His study provided vital information about the hazards faced by the children in this sector. A major finding of his study was that many of the health problems of carpet weavers are caused by the poor design of loom, which has not undergone significant change over the centuries. As follow up of the research study, Mr. Saeed Awan and his team from CIWCE designed a model loom

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which was extensively tested to see its acceptability by poor and illiterate families. After repeated trials, the 30 model looms and working environment controls were installed in thirty workplaces in the districts of Sheikhupura, Gujranwala and Hafizabad. The Government of Punjab has already adopted this loom as a tool to tackle rural poverty, eliminate debt bondage in carpet production and to empower the poor rural women. A proposal to supply 6000 ergonomic looms and associated OSH controls on soft loan conditions is being considered by the government. This loom has potential to change the lives of millions of carpet weavers in India, Nepal, Afghanistan Iran, Morocco and elsewhere. Many American organizations and corporations have pledged their support to the activities of Mr. Awan and are have asked him to work out more innovative ideas where technology can use the human suffering.

The news of the award Mr. Awan’s Award was prominently carried by the media including TV, newspapers and websites in California and elsewhere in the USA.. Earlier the Chief Minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi

A number of projects and schemes are being worked out for the promotion of this loom. The Punjab Small Industries Corporation with the collaboration of Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PCMEA) is contemplating a major project for provision of 12000 looms to the workers in Punjab. This imitative is intended to promote better productivity, standardisation of designs to boost exports of the carpets. The Labour & Human Resource Department Punjab also intends to provide 1000 looms on soft loan conditions to the rural carpet weavers particularly the women. This move is aimed at encouraging the adult workers to take up the work presently being done by child workers, improve health and productivity of adult carpet weavers, to eliminate coercion and bonding of the carpet weaving families by the contractors and enhance the skills of rural workers specially women so they can earn more by using their skills.

Download a brochure about the work