Sex workers demand houses, BPL cards
After S Veena, the first transgender to contest election in South India, filed her nomination for the upcoming BBMP elections on Monday, a sex workers’ organisation has submitted a list of its demands to all the major political parties contesting for the polls, on Wednesday.
Nithya Sumangale Sangatane, an organisation that represents sex workers living in slums, has sought a mandatory provision of Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration card and voter ID cards to all sex workers living in BBMP limits, allotment of funds or inclusion of children of sex workers in State’s welfare schemes in education, housing etc. "Most of us live in slums and are the sole breadwinners of our families. Despite our low income nearly 95 per cent of us have been given Above Poverty Line cards,” said Jayalakshmi.
"In the past three years we have sent three applications under the Rajiv Gandhi Housing scheme but to no avail,” said Radha.In addition to this the sex workers demanded that the State government should include them under the Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Scheme and also provide a monthly pension of Rs 2,000 to aged sex workers and widows.
