A tripartite agreement was signed between Jan Oushadhi, Local Self Government Department and Kudumbashree for starting Jan Oushadhi medical stores in each Panchayat or wherever feasible. Its a convergence project of local self government department and Kudumbashree. Panchayat will find out a suitable building and will give it to Kudumbashree units for running the pharma store. Kudumbashree units will have to employ a pharmacist and a computer operator to run the store. More than 450 varieties of medicines will be supplied by Jan Oushadhi. As an initial assistance, Rs. 1.5 lakh will be given to the Kudumbashree entrepreneur as capital subsidy for purchase of computers and for procurement of furniture. Further, medicines worth Rs. 1.0 lakh will be given free of cost (on credit). Using sales of these medicine, new medicines may be purchased as per requirement. At present, there is demand to start such stores in 34 Panchayats, and we are expecting demand from more places in near future.

It was a prestigious moment for Kudumbashree when Hon. Prime Minister inaugurated Kochi Metro in June 2017. The reason for pride arose from the fact that for the first time in history, an ‘all women metro’ was inaugurated and Kudumbashree got the opportunity to do the facility management services for Kochi metro. As per the agreement with Kochi Metro, all services ranging from parking management to customer facilitation, from ticketing to housekeeping are entrusted with Kudumbashree. Total demand was for 780 staff. In this first phase 530 women are selected and they are serving Kochi Metro now. When 5 more new metro stations will be commissioned by September, Kudumbashree will provide 250 more staff. The present ‘women metro team’ are selected through a rigorous process. More than 40,000 candidates appeared for the written exam, and of them 1,077 were called for a personal interview. Kudumbashree members or their families only were allowed to participate. Yes, when Metro grows, opportunities for poor women also enhances.