West Bengal government launches acting training project for sex workers

KOLKATA: The West Bengal Government has launched an acting training project called Swabalamban Special. The project a brain child of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is for the sex workers of the state. It was launched today by Dr Sashi Panja, Minister of State, Women Development & Social Welfare, and Child Development.

Swabalamban Special is targeted at making the sex workers self-sufficient by giving them acting lessons so that they could look for employment in the entertainment industry.

The project is being run by West Bengal Women Development Undertaking, which promotes entrepreneurship and self-employment among women.

This would run concurrently with another pet project of the Chief Minister, Muktir Alo (‘Light of Freedom’). This is a project to train female sex workers in vocational skills and provide financial assistance for starting small-scale business ventures.

During the nine month training programme whoever takes up the coarse also gets free stay and food at state-run welfare homes. Boarding and lodging apart, they are also entitled to a monthly stipend. To promote the sense of entrepreneurship among the candidates who enrol themselves for these programmes, each of them who wish to start a business of their own are provided with a start up capital of Rs 25,000.