Sex workers in West Bengal demand rights, ask parties to keep promises

Kolkata: As West Bengal prepares to vote in a few days, sex-workers in the state despair over the unfulfilled promises made to them by political parties in the preceding elections and say they want "concrete" measures this time.

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, representing 1,50,000 sex workers in West Bengal, said they felt cheated because no political party had kept its promise to look into their demands, let alone fulfilling them.

"Whenever elections come, political parties make tall promises, but none of them is kept. We have been regularly placing a charter of demands for the last several years, but nothing has come of it," president of All-India Network for Sex Workers and Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee Bharati Dey told PTI.

Frustrated, the roughly five million sex-workers in the country under the All India Network for Sex Workers (AINSW) want to exercise the NOTA (None Of The Above) option in ballot papers to express their disapproval, Dey said.

The AINSW is a national network of sex-workers across the country spread across 16 states.

"We will send letters to political parties listing our demands and raising issues that concern sex workers and their families," she said.

The demands that the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) has flagged over the years are: pension rights for retired sex workers, removal of Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), legalisation of the profession, covering sex-workers under labour laws and setting up of self-regulatory board for sex-workers to stop minors from being forced into the profession.

"None of these demands has been met by the respective state and central governments. But these are the basic rights which a sex worker needs to be given to be able to lead a proper life," said Mahasweta Mukherjee of the DMSC.