Kolkata: Over 3,500 sex workers took out a candle-light rally shortly after midnight to press for their rights and social recognition as labourers on the occasion of Labour Day on Thursday.

“We took out the rally from Sonagachi area (Kolkata’s largest red-light district), and finally converged at College Square at around 2 am on Thursday.

“We held this rally in demand of our social rights as sex workers,” Bharati Dey of Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), an NGO working for sex workers’ rights said.

She said sex workers were often treated as a blot on civil society and despite working so hard they hardly get any respect by people. 

DMSC is a forum exclusively of sex workers and their children. In July 1995, a group of sex workers from Sonagachi had set up the committee to create solidarity among sex workers. “We have been fighting for the cause since past 16 years across the country but nothing has been changed, as far as the lives of sex workers are concerned. They are still to come out of the dark lanes of the red light pockets,” Dey said.

Meanwhile, Dey has been granted a life insurance cover which she says is a step forward in her campaign to legalise the profession in India. Once practising her trade in the run-down quarters of Sonagachi, she is now a proud holder of a policy from the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India.

“The policy won’t change much in our life, but this small step is a giant leap forward in our struggle for legal recognition of sex work,” said Dey. “We live in a no-man’s land in India where we are harassed by cops and rowdies,” added the 45-year-old.

Over the last month around 250 sex workers in the city have been given life insurance policies by the LIC.

Prostitutes say it is a breakthrough in their efforts to get legal recognition for their work. Without many official documents, prostitutes are rarely able to open accounts in banks or join the financial mainstream.

Source : DNAIndia