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Bengal

Transgender Development Board offices in dists soon

Kolkata: State government will open Transgender Development Board offices in the districts soon.

Sashi Panja, Minister of State for Woman Development and Social Welfare department, said on Wednesday. The new office of Transgender Board along with offices of State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and State Nutrition Mission Authority were opened at Suvanna in Salt Lake on Wednesday.

After coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee addressed the issues of transgender and set up a board for their development.

Apart from the shifting of departments, the forth 'Muktir Alo' cafeteria run by women in distress was inaugurated on Wednesday at Bikash Bhavan in Salt Lake. The women who will run the cafeteria are either sex workers who wish to come back to main stream or women who are the victims of human trafficking in Bengal.

"We realised that several transgender persons have to travel all the way to Kolkata in order to get in touch with the board to raise their problems. We are starting transgender board offices in the districts soon so that they do not have to travel all the way to Kolkata." Said Panja.

About the Muktir Alo scheme she said: "Our aim is to rehabilitate the women in distress. This effort will help them to be self dependent and establish their identity as a successful individual. Earlier we had opened three more such cafeterias in Munshigunj, Alipore Courtpremises and Alipore Zoo which are very successful."

The Muktir Alo scheme was started in September, 2015 by Banerjee to provide opportunities to the women who are from backward and marginal areas of the society along with those who are forced to work as sex workers or situation made her to do so.

In this scheme such women are given training in various fields such as cafeteria management, block printing, spice grinding and many more.

In phases 75 such women were given training and 13 of them were rehabilitated who were trained in cafeteria management. Three such women will be running the cafeteria of Bikash Bhavan.

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