Editor,
The sex worker community in Shillong is extremely grateful to you for publishing a letter, “We are humans too!” from one of our sisters in distress a month ago on Sep 2, 2020. You stood up for us when nobody else did; but it’s time we stand up for ourselves. Through this letter, we as an Association would like to remind our State Government that criminalization of sex work is a human rights issue. At the same time, we would also like to suggest to our respected leaders how decriminalizing sex work would help protect us as this would maximize our legal protection and also our ability to exercise other key rights, including rights to justice and health care. Our legal recognition and occupation maximizes our protection, dignity, and equality. This is an important step toward destigmatizing sex work.
So, what exactly do we want the Meghalaya government to do? What we want is for you to fully decriminalize sex work and ensure that we do not face discrimination in law or practice. You, our respected leaders should also strengthen services for sex workers and ensure that we have safe working conditions (as compared to secretly operating in rented houses and abandoned government buildings) and access to public benefits and social safety nets.
Moreover, any regulation and control on us and our activities need to be non-discriminatory and to comply with international human rights laws. For example, restrictions that would prevent us who engage in sex work from organizing collectively, or working in a safe environment, are not legitimate restrictions. This pandemic has been tough for me and many other sex workers in Shillong, and the end of the lockdown has brought new challenges. Covid-19 has really shed light on the various ways in which the pandemic has affected our health and rights, with respect to inadequate or non-existent access to labour rights, exclusion from government relief and protection measures, and as targets of intensified law enforcement. It’s time the government hear us out. Sex Work is Real Work, and it’s time to treat it that way!
Yours etc.,
Name withheld on request
President, Rot Association of Meghalaya (RAM)
Headquarters: Nongmynsong, Shillong
Is it justified to deny pension?
Editor,
It is regretful to know that some staff of the Directorate of Agriculture occupying low grade posts, or, for that matter in other state departments who have since recently retired from service have been denied their due pension entitlements. This action of the Government against the retirees has placed the victims and their family in a dilemma especially since some retirees also happen to be the sole bread earners of the house-hold. The background for withholding such pensionary benefits is ostensibly because the staff in question had been appointed in an irregular procedure by the former directors without the joint approval of the Department Selection Committee (DSC). However, the moot question is can those retirees who had been continuously serving the Department for not less than 40 (forty) years and while in service they had availed all the monetary facilities like house building advance, festival advance, children’s education and other advances etc., contributed GPF and had a good service record but at the end of their entire service period have been denied the right to a pension.
Incidentally, in Haryana a few decades ago, the Ex- Director General of Police (DGP), SPS Rathore was allegedly accused of being an abettor in the suicide of a 14 years young woman tennis player R. Girhorla in 1993 and there was a purported move by the Govt. to withhold his pension. However on December 17, 2011, the Central Administrative Tribune (CAT) disapproved the proposal outright by asserting that: “The pension of a person is not a bounty. It is a legal entitlement..”
Yours etc.,
Jerome K. Diengdoh
Shillong -2