NEW DELHI: In most red-light areas, brothels have reopened after a prolonged lockdown and easing of restrictions. Sex work, a profession which is essentially based on physical intimacy, has received a severe blow due to the pandemic situation. The sex workers’ meagre savings have run out and only regular customers are showing up. In addition to this, social and cultural stigma prohibits governments and communities from coming out publicly and taking meaningful action to support them.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Tejaswi Sevekari who is Executive Director at Saheli Sangha, an NGO working in the red light areas in Pune, said: “A few sex workers have tried alternative professions, but the reality is that even those from the mainstream society have lost their jobs. Adding expertise and stigma to hire a sex worker renders it utterly impossible for them to find an alternative route.” She added, “In India, sex work is neither illegal, nor is it decriminalised. Until and unless sex work is disassociated with trafficking, things won’t improve. There are a large number of women and transgenders who voluntarily enter sex work and that is their bread and butter.”
Many NGOs offering food, groceries, medicines, and counselling to sex workers have also began educational sessions with them on how to prevent Covid and virtual classes for their children. They have also published certain SOPs that include using masks and gloves as well as sanitising themselves, their area and the clients. They are also instructed to ask their regular clients if they have any history of illness. Besides, virtual sex or phone sex is widely being opted as an innovative way to get back to their business.
Seema Sayyed, manager at Aastha Parivaar, a non-profit organisation of, by and for sex workers in Mumbai, told The Sunday Guardian, “The people in established societies in Kamathipura, a red light area in Mumbai, have always been against the brothels. Now, these people have started a poster campaign where they’ve put up huge posters saying if you want to be safe, stay away from sex workers. It is as if we are putting all the onus on the sex workers as a carrier of coronavirus. So, even if they want to start their work, the locals have taken this as an opportunity to make things difficult for them.”
Seema Sayyed told this newspaper that for those sex workers who stayed in the brothel, there were a few Gharwali who didn’t allow sex workers to stay when they couldn’t pay for the rent which is deducted from their daily earnings. Some of them were staying in corridors of their building until they were helped by the other sex workers. “The Jan Dhan accounts that we opened for them, they could live on that for a couple of days, but these workers send out-and-out a big part of their income to their family. They frequently invest in gold that has now allowed them to mortgage it to moneylenders and cope with their needs,” she said.
Tejaswi Sevekari told The Sunday Guardian about the much-appreciated efforts of the police department which worked closely with them all the while. She also spoke about an urgent legal framework at the national level for sex workers. She said, “The government needs to take this responsibility, and so far, no support has come from their side; forget about Pune, but nowhere in India.
A circular for providing basic requirements was published one-and-a- half months ago by the Ministry of Women & Child Development and the District Collector is supposed to enforce it. But, again, that’s just a guideline with no legal framework.”