Silchar: Vice dens resist safe-sex drive

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Vice dens resist safe-sex drive

Cachar, OUR CORRESPONDENT. Dec. 10: Organisations campaigning against

HIV/AIDS seem to be fighting a losing battle against the vice dens

that have mushroomed in the urban sprawl of Silchar, the 175-year-old

headquarters town of Cachar district.

" I have personally never encountered more resistance to an anti-AIDS

campaign than in Silchar. It's really unfortunate, " says Diba Roy,

secretary of the Nivedita Nari Sangha.

Roy and her colleagues in the 11-year-old NGO have been at the

forefront of the campaign to promote safe sex in the red light areas

of the town.

The Nivedita Nari Sangha recently entered into an agreement with the

Durbar Mahila Samanway Committee of Calcutta, an organisation of sex

workers that has earned global recognition through its pioneering

campaign in the sprawling red light district of Sonagachhi.

Under the agreement, activists of the Calcutta organisation will help

Nivedita Nari Sangha conduct an audio-visual awareness campaign among

the inmates of brothels and sex workers on the streets of Silchar.

Both the organisations primarily work towards rehabilitation of sex

workers and provide vocational training to them with the help of the

government. Banks also lend a helping hand by financing small, viable

businesses.

But Roy is disheartened by the response to the campaign from sex

workers in Silchar. " Would you believe it? I have even been chased by

sex workers and their pimps, " she complains. The safe-sex campaign

has been launched in the commercial hub of Premtola and

the " unorganised " red light areas of Nagatilla, Ramnagar and

Chamragudam, all on the fringes of the town.

Roy attributes the resistance from sex workers to the campaign to a

prejudice against condoms. " They believe their regular clients will

desert them if they insist on using condoms. "

Going by a survey of new vice dens by the Nivedita Nari Sangha, most

of the patrons of sex workers are truck drivers travelling to Mizoram

and Manipur via south Assam. " We suspect most of these truckers are

HIV carriers and pose the biggest risk to sex workers who entertain

them here, " says Roy. Hundreds of goods-laden trucks pass through

Silchar everyday en route to Mizoram and Tripura.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061211/asp/northeast/story_7122162.asp