Ongole: NGO hails NHRC's advisory to recognise sex workers

Ongole: HELP NGO secretary NVS Rammohan Rao said that a coalition of human rights activists, survivor leaders, lawyers and researchers under the forum- Tafteesh, welcomed the recent advisory of the National Human Rights Commission to recognize the sex workers as informal workers so that they can access all benefits and services as equal citizens of the country. But he advised the authorities to be cautious and they should make sure that the traffickers, madams, brothel managers and pimps should be conflated with sex workers.

Rammohan said, "We, as Tafteesh, support the NHRC's call for decriminalization of sex workers and recognizing them as informal labour. However, we call for the criminalization of madams, brothel managers, brothel owners and pimps, who exploit the sex workers for debt bondage. We firmly believe that traffickers, brothel managers, brothel owners and pimps should not be conflated with the sex workers. We also believe that recognition of sex workers as informal labour on one hand and criminalization of brothel owners, madams, pimps and sex traffickers on the other will empower sex workers against their exploiters."

"As grassroots activists, survivors of sex trafficking and sex workers, we desist from making ideological proclamations. Whether prostitution is in-dignifying to some or respectable to another is a matter of personal perception or choice. However, the State, while drafting public policy cannot get driven by narrow ideological groups who push agenda based on their own beliefs and rigid stances. It is time we stepped above the vilest form of politics that plays with the lives of most vulnerable children and women in India and do what is needed with a long-term vision and also a robust road map," he added.

Rammohan also advised that it is critical to define who is a sex worker and the state must bifurcate between the exploited or vulnerable and the exploiter – those who run brothels and profit from sex workers, those who own brothels and red-light districts and profit from the sex trade.

He said that it is important to make all financial and welfare inclusion benefits available to sex workers.