Social service organisations Shakthi AIDS Tadegattuva Mahila Sangha and BIRDS have urged the government to partner the Karnataka State Rural Livelihood Mission with community-based organisations of sex workers. This will help them facilitate the convergence of all departments through a single-window mechanism to ensure that sex workers and their children are not left out of the benefits available under government-sponsored programmes.
The Mahila Sangha and BIRDS, which conducted a survey with the technical support of Centre for Advocacy and Research to elicit qualitative and quantitative assessment on sex workers’ access to key schemes and programmes of the government in the district, submitted its findings to the government through the office of the Deputy Commissioner here on Thursday. There was need to expand the mechanism of community-led single-window to all the districts, involvement of representatives of sex workers in designing, developing and implementing the programmes.
There is need for strengthening community-based monitoring and social audit of all government programmes to ascertain whether the marginal community of sex workers also benefited.
Spokesman for these organisations, Saifuddin said 32 researchers drawn from community-based organisations representing sex workers undertook the survey with the objective of collating evidence on the extent of inclusion/exclusion of most-at-risk population in mainstream development programmes and entitlements. A total of 700 respondents were surveyed. Some of the key findings were that only 84 per cent had obtained Voter’s ID and 53 per cent had obtained Aadhaar Cards. From the survey, 39 per cent of the respondents were unaware of any housing scheme of the government.
The feeling of stigma and discrimination clubbed with insensitivity in governance had only discouraged the community members to access schemes, the report said.
There is need for social audit of all government programmes
