Following the six-week-long lockdown across the country, the marginalised transgender community in the twin cities has been left in a lurch.
During the lockdown, many poverty-stricken communities have managed to find out a way to continue their daily work. However, the plight of transgender segment remained.
They say that the services sector was their major source of income and due to curfew-like lockdown; they are starving and forced to vacate their shelters due to non-payment of rents.
Nadeem Kashish, head SAFFAR, an Islamabad-based non-governmental organization, when contacted by Daily Times said six-month long curfew-like lockdown has been nothing short of a disaster for the marginalized transgender community.
Kashish said there are at least 3,000 transgender persons living in Islamabad and around 5,000 in Rawalpindi. Most of them live in confined quarters in segregated parts of the cities’ slums and make a living while working at homes as domestic helpers; performing at public events such as weddings, and pleading in commercial markets as beggars.
She further said that a ban on public events and closure of commercial markets have robbed these marginalized people of their major sources of income.
Kashish says this scenario was nothing short of a ‘nightmare’ where they have been pushed close to food and shelters, adding that many members of his community are being forced to vacate their flats due to non-payment of rents.
The trans rights defender said that despite the government’s announcement of a huge financial package for the downtrodden communities, the transgender community feels left out as it has received no aid under Prime Minister’s Ehsas Program.
“Why is there no separate allocation of funds for transgender community despite the fact that the country-wide lockdown has deprived hundreds of thousands of transgenders from bread and butter?”, she asked.
The transgender representative said that they have provided data of 300 trans-women to the government. We made sure to provide sanitize environment with social distancing (during ration distribution). “But merely providing them ration is not a long term solution.”
“How can we manage our house rent, when we have been in self-isolation for one-and-a-half month? Our landlords do not understand the problem, and keep asking us for rent,” says another transgender Shazia Choti, living in a rented flat in Rawalpindi, along with 11 other community members.
“We are 12 trans-persons sharing a portion of a multi-story building for Rs 20,000 per month and our sources of income were event performances and begging from commercial markets, which is no longer our source of income after the lockdown,” she recalled.
Regarding initiatives taken by the government for transgender community rights protection, Ministry of Human Rights said that it has been taken several initiatives to protect rights of transgender people in the country .
The ministry spokesperson, Zile Huma, said in a statement that these initiatives include Transgender Act and formulation of its rules through national consultation. A national committee has been established for implementation of Transgender Act.
She claimed that Ministry of Human Rights also ensured availability of instructions in English and Urdu for police training to protect transgender rights, adding that several workshops for protection of transgenders from HIV and disgrace has been organized by the ministry.
The process of consultation has been started on mechanism of sending complaints to centers established to protect transgender s rights. Moreover, the Ministry of Human Rights also arranged several consultation sessions with NADRA, Ministry of Health and universities across the country to create public awareness.
