Samikhsya Bureau
The transgender squad assigned to recover house-holding taxes from defaulters is a laudable initiative by the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation(BMC) and their (transgender)performance has proved that, they are way ahead of the regular stuff of personnel who have failed to do so for reasons not known.
It is time that the society stops bracketing them to being mythological beings those can only sing and dance at private functions.
Even today, it is a common sight that some of them can be seen as dressy doxies standing in wait for someone to pick them up for the evening. Their plight is comprehensible. It is all for bread and butter.
Time is changing fast and lesser are the occasions when a transgender can be sighted engaging in extortions or begging. Or even some people are engaging them as sex workers.
An estimate shows that, in Odisha there are about 70,000 transgener but not all of them are ready to be identified as so due to social stigmas attached to that.
Even most of the third genders suffer humiliation and discrimination inside the family which force most of them to flee from homes to join the fraternity at different locations and mostly in rural pockets.
Now, it has become all the more necessary that, the system must come forward to make best utilisation of their abilities like the one undertaken by the BMC and that deserves a thumps up.
Making a collection of over Rs.7.54 lakhs within a short period is not something that can be underestimated in any way.
Why only the BMC but, other wings of the government should now come forward to engage the transgender in similar nature of assignments with a multi-pronged approach towards their complete inclusion in the society.
Education can do wonders. Government has a role to jack the literacy rate among them. Their literacy percentage(46% or less) is way below the national average of about 76 %. What they require is support as majority of them face the scorn of poverty.
So they can no longer be the victims of ridicule or harassment, leading to isolation from the family.
