From Our Special Correspondent
‘Need to regulate placement agencies to prevent trafficking from tribal, rural areas’
New Delhi: The lone women Member of Parliament from Meghalaya, Wansuk Syiem, has highlighted several problems relating to women with the new Government starting from witch hunting to trafficking.
In a communication with the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, Wansuk raised concern over the growing incidents of violence against women in the country. This she said has cast a dark shadow on the country’s liberal and progressive credentials.
But comparatively the North Eastern states remain less prone to such violence against women, Wansuk said. Women in the North East by tradition and social customs enjoy more freedom than their counterparts in the rest of the country, she said.
The scenario in the North East in relation to female feticide, dowry and other caste based social evils, is far better as compared to women from other parts of India, the Rajya Sabha member pointed out.
Inspite of this fact, women in the region are becoming targets of social evils like trafficking and witch hunting, she said.
Nowadays women and even children are targeted and victimized by human traffickers, Wansuk said. Majority of unregulated placement agencies located in mega cities, including Delhi and NCR, are targeting women, girls and children from rural remote areas and tribal pockets, she said.
“Such helpless women and girls who are mostly illiterate are confined, assaulted, raped and sold more than once to different unscrupulous hands. I demand that the Government should come up with a strong law for regulating placement agencies in the country,” she said.
There are growing instances of witch-hunting in the North East and this superstitious practice leads to persecution and death of a number of women and children every year, she said.
The Rajya Sabha member, who was a two-time member of the National Commission for Women, also highlighted the plight of women and children in the tea gardens of the North Eastern region, who are passing through a bad phase. Women workers are discriminated against in terms of wages, which is far below the minimum wages prescribed in other states, she said.
At the same time Wansuk expressed her disappointment with this year’s budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Women and Child Development. She demanded higher allocation to this Ministry for development of women and children in the country.