Simran Snigdha was begging when a chance encounter helped get her off Bangladesh’s streets and realize her artistic dreams — one of a growing number of transgender people securing formal employment as the government boosts support for the marginalized community.
The Muslim-majority nation’s roughly 1.5 million transgender people have long faced discrimination and violence.
Kicked out from homes and communities, cut off from education and shunned by many employers, they often turn to begging, the sex trade or crime.
Photo: AFP
“I didn’t get the opportunity — I had to extort people ... and did prostitution,” Snigdha said at a garment factory in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.
The Bangladeshi government has implemented new laws, such as tax breaks, for firms hiring transgender people, helping pave the way for their integration into society.
Snigdha now works for a firm owned and run by another transgender woman, while pursuing her dreams of being a painter.
“I can now pursue my favorite work,” the 32-year-old said as she painted.
While she has found safety, Snigdha said there were scores more transgender artists in need of help.
“I pray they don’t go back to begging even for another day,” she said.
Like many of her peers, Snigdha fled her rural home in central Bangladesh for a transgender commune in Dhaka at 15 after facing abuse and rejection.
She lived under the protection of a guruma — a politically and socially connected transgender person who grants some economic security, but who can force residents into the sex trade, extortion or prevent them from getting an education.
Snigdha’s life changed in 2019 when she peered into a car window at a road crossing. Staring back was transgender factory owner Siddik Bhuyan Synthia — who asked her to join the business.
“In the past ... bullying [of transgender people] was the order, but [the] majority of the society are now our well-wishers,” Synthia said.
“The trans workers in my factory are very ordinary people. They don’t want to go to the dark businesses,” the 38-year-old said. “They prefer to have a social life just like any of us.”
Under Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a growing tolerance for the rights of sexual minorities has seen a raft of new laws.
Transgender people in 2013 were officially identified as a separate gender, and in 2018 they were allowed to register to vote as a third gender.
The government has also unveiled affirmative action schemes and a series of benefits.
As a result, several transgender-owned and run businesses — mostly beauty salons, but also small factories — have started popping up across Dhaka in the past few years.
Such firms were “unthinkable, even a few years back,” said Shale Ahmed, executive director of sexual minorities charity Bondhu.
Apon Akhter is one of those changing that expectation.
At her garment factory in Dhaka, she employs only transgender people.
“When I started ... people mocked me saying transgender people won’t be able to do productive work,” the 32-year-old guruma said. “They said we belong to the streets. I promised myself I’d prove them wrong.”
While Akhter acknowledges that her 25 employees’ salaries are not high, they are still studying — knocking down another barrier that the transgender community faces.
“Once you are out of homes, you end up without education, and lack of education means there is no way a company can employ you in a high-paying job,” said Rafid Saumik from charity TransEnd.
Akhter said many of her employees came to her after suffering and barely surviving for years, and her factory gives them a chance to pursue their education.
“I strongly want them to see the light they’ve been looking for in life because we only have each other,” she said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to