Kabul, Sep 29 : In more measures to keep women out from public life, the Taliban’s Ministry of Rural Development has banned women from returning to work.

The Ministry ordered only men to return to their jobs, and said the return of women to work has been “postponed” until it prepares a “mechanism for how they will work”.

Screen shots of the letter written by the Taliban have been posted on social media.

In another Taliban directive, a senior member of the Islamist group was heard saying on television that women shall not wear colourful clothes, wear perfume or high heeled shoes.

“Women shall refrain from wearing attractive colours in public, they shall refrain from smelling good in public and women shall refrain from wearing high heels that make sounds while they are walking,” the Taliban official is heard telling the audience.

This comes as the Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.

On September 17, the Taliban-run education ministry in a statement said Afghan schools will open for boys but did not mention when girls might be able to return to school. “All male teachers and students should attend their educational institutions,” it said.

The Ministry of Information and Culture said the caretaker government in cooperation with some religious scholars is working on a plan to open schools for girls.

As part of the Taliban’s new rules on education, girls and women can only be taught by female teachers or, in cases where there are not enough female teachers, by “older” men who have shown that they are “pious”. Likewise, women are able to return to universities but must study under some form of gender segregation.

The UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has voiced concern over keeping girls out of education.

“Ensuring all Afghan girls can be educated must be “a zero condition” for the Taliban, before international recognition of their de facto authority,” she said last week.

Earlier this month, the Taliban shut down the government’s ministry of women’s affairs and replaced it with a department for enforcing strict religious doctrine.(UNI)