Bhubaneswar: In an aim to provide equal opportunities to transgenders, the state government has asked all the departments to include them under ongoing schemes.
Social Security & Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SSEPD) department secretary Bhaskar Sarma has written to all the secretaries in this regard.
“The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 provides for enhancing the scope of existing schemes to include transgender persons in the purview of the ongoing schemes and also to formulae new schemes for their welfare to protect their rights and interests and facilitate their access to welfare schemes and other related benefit to them,” Sarma said in his letter.
He requested the secretaries to incorporate special provisions for inclusion of transgender persons in the ongoing schemes and services with a spirit to bring them to the mainstream by uplifting their socio-economic status.
Sarma urged the secretaries to intimate all the establishments under their administrative control for designating complain officers. Sarma has asked the collectors to constitute a Transgender Protection Cell under the chairmanship of the DM to monitor cases of offences against the third gender.
