Considerable steam is gathering in the State against the draft Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018, which was to be presented in the Rajya Sabha in the current session.

The bill is being opposed by women activists and voluntary sex workers as its provisions are feared to curb the freedom of sex workers to voluntarily identify themselves as trafficking victims. It does not recognise the fact that there could be women not trafficked and doing sex work voluntarily, they say.

Sex workers who spent time in shelter homes vouch for the same. Sharada (name changed) is extremely worried about her future and that of her 13-year-old. “I have not a paisa on me, and my daughter is asking me to buy her footwear. Her petticoats and undergarments are in shreds. I just have two pairs of clothes, and a lakh rupees of debt after my time at shelter home,” she says in a voice choking with grief.

Financial woes

She entered sex trade following desertion by her husband and demise of her parents, and does it between her other jobs at hotels, hospitals and as a junior artiste.

At the shelter, she could meet her daughter only once, when she was brought there after five months. Her brother has spent close to a lakh of rupees for her release, and now repayment is her main worry. The little tailoring she was taught at the shelter does not help.

Sharada is still fortunate to have a blood relative who could file a petition for her release. Many others are not. “Petitions by live-in partners are not accepted. Some women realised they were pregnant after coming to the home, and gave birth there. What if their husbands refuse to take them back,” Sharada questions.

While pimps and traffickers are sent to jail and come out on bail in a week’s time, women are forced to do time at shelter homes indefinitely.

Secrets spilled

While minors and juveniles have a lot to thank for rehabilitation at shelter homes, many adult women voluntarily enter sex work, most often unable to make ends meet. In majority of the cases, spouses are either dead, or have deserted them, or rendered invalid.

“We do it secretly, without knowledge of our neighbours. But once we are sent to the home, everyone comes to know of it, and our children’s lives become miserable,” says Alivelu (name changed), another survivor, who says her daughter was gang-raped when she was at the shelter home, but her physically challenged husband could do nothing to fight the assault.

“Instead of allowing the trafficking victims to identify themselves, the bill assumes a paternalistic tone towards all sex workers. This also announces arrival of a NGO-capitalist-industrialist complex, whereby sex workers are pushed from one kind of illegal trafficking to other. Sexual slavery is replaced by wageless labour,” says Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, an activist, referring to the productive work extracted from the survivors at the shelter homes.