SHILLONG, July 18: Against the backdrop of the police cracking down on sex workers in the city, Cabinet Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh on Tuesday remarked that every woman standing on the road at odd hours is not a sex worker even as she urged the police to verify facts before taking anyone into custody.
It may be recalled that the police have apprehended 15 sex workers and intensified foot patrolling in areas around Khyndai Lad. They said that the action is a crackdown on sex workers “whose acts of soliciting customers are not only illegal but many a time the cause for many law and order problems.”
“We need to have several other factors to first verify before we can consider every woman standing on the road as a sex worker which is not correct and there should be certain indicators that suggest that certain individuals are involved in the act,” the minister said, while emphasising that people have to be vigilant and responsible if they want to venture out at night.
Asked about the odd-even system that was previously imposed on taxis plying in the city, Lyngdoh said that there is a certain data that needs to be taken into consideration before putting into place an order.
According to Lyngdoh, there are two lakh private vehicles plying in Shillong every day, and only about 1,600 odd taxis are been registered in Shillong. “The government had to evaluate if they only look at these 1,600 as deterrents of traffic flow or are there other factors also? So decisions have to be taken based on indicators that will justify an action,” she said.
She also called for a bigger approach as she rued that people nowadays do not even comply with the Dorbar Shnong’s diktat on parking of vehicles.
It may be mentioned that the East Khasi Hills district administration’s last two orders of imposing odd-even system for local taxis in Police Bazar and Motphran, besides the order of closing down commercial activities in Shillong by 10 pm, had to be amended following stiff opposition from the stakeholders.
On the other hand, Ampareen, who is the Health Minister, revealed that the state government has set up a committee to ensure that medical wastes are discarded correctly by government agencies.
