Sex workers want Bill to be repealed

Stage demonstration to voice their grouse

Devanshi Joshi. Vadodara/DNA

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Social activists, sex workers, gays and lesbians staged a demonstration at Mahatma Gandhinagar Gruh in Vadodara on Tuesday asking the government to repeal the Immoral Traffic Prevention Amendment Bill, 2008. More than 300 people across Gujarat protested in the city.A sex worker in Vadodara, Bhavna Kansara (name changed), said “I have been working as a sex worker for 17 years. I am doing it for survival of my family and feel that nothing is wrong about it. The government should not implement the Act, which would lead to arrest of anybody visiting sex workers. And in that case, my familys survival would be at stake.”Varsha Chawda (name changed), another sex worker from Ahmedabad, said, “Under this Act, the police can arrest sex workers without issuing warrant. This will be misused against sex workers like us who have are in this profession to survive.”Maya Sharma, project manager of an NGO Parama, “If sex work is going on against the consent of someone then it should be objected to strongly by the rule. Instead of this, the Act is against those sex workers who have been in the profession by their own consent.”“If sex work is being done against someone's will or secretly then steps should be taken to prevent it. But due to ITPA Act, there are chances that sex workers would be compelled to work clandestinely and that would lead to spread of AIDS ,” said Indira Pathak, of Vikalp.