Social worker Tara Kerkar‘s NGO ‘Savera’ on Monday came out in support of any proposal to regularize prostitution, saying that while those engaged in commercial sex services receive steady financial gains, they continue to remain vulnerable otherwise to exploitation and disease.
Referring to a recent instance where nine women escaped from the protective home for victims rescued from flesh trade, Kerkar said, “It is not possible to rehabilitate those employed in such trade because majority of them do not wish to let go of the employment as it pays well. What is required is regularization of the entire trade in the state so that those employed therein are protected by law.”
She further flayed the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar for cracking down on the red light area in Baina in June 2004. “What Parrikar did in Baina in 2004 was wrong,” Kerkar said. Members of Savera also expressed the need for an infrastructural upgradation of the protective home in Merces while calling for the staff and the counselors to be sensitive towards the women.