The Armed Police Force (APF) has started offering foreign employment to the widows of APF staff, who were killed in course of curbing Maoist activities, reports said Monday.

Such an initiative jointly taken by APF and the SAARC Secretariat, aims at improving the financial condition of the slain APF staffs’ families, Kantipur daily said. In the first lot, 15 widows have received jobs at a company in the Maldivian capital of Male, the daily said.

Among the 15 widows, 10 are from armed police and 5 are from civil police. No fee has been charged to them for offering those jobs, according to APF officials.

The company, Maldives Industrial Fisheries Company Limited, had asked APF to supply 20 employees to it. Five more widows will be joining the remaining jobs soon, the daily said.

To date, 1,109 civil police and 175 armed-police were killed in the conflict with the Maoists, the daily quoted Home Ministry spokesman Gopendra Bahadur Pandey, as saying.