Beyond the dark alleys, floating sex workers on their way to a new life

A rather old, dilapidated building standing in Mugda, Dhaka. Worn down at the edges, the kind of place where paint peels quietly and nobody rushes to fix it.The ground floor is a maze of narrow, dark alleys of dimly lit rooms and the air there feels a bit heavy with dampness.

At the door of the first room, a group of toddlers came into view, most of them barely two. Some were playing blissfully on their own, others gathered in a circle around a woman, their tiny eyes glued in deep concentration to the Bengali alphabet in a picture book. Then they noticed me.

The sheer excitement they showed upon seeing an unknown stranger standing at the door! Rushing forward, shouting altogether with bright smiles, "Assalamu Alaikum!"

I had never met these children before. There was no prior acquaintance.

Stepping a bit further, there is a second room. Two women sitting in a circle were feeding lunch to some more children. Right next to it is a relatively larger room, where 20 or maybe 25 kids were sitting in neat rows, plates of rice in front of each of them.

A few looked up, startled by the unfamiliar face at the door and for a second something like hesitation crossed their faces. But it did not take long to overcome that hesitance. A handful ran over anyway, smiling like they'd known me for years.

But at the other end of the ground floor, there was a different kind of celebration.

Several women stood in a line, holding certificates in their hands. Their faces carried a quiet sense of confidence and relief. A large part of the room was filled with rows of sewing machines. On another side were sacks filled with rice, lentils and other household essentials. One by one, the women walked up to a banner hanging on the wall. They were smiling, sharing their journey and stories, and taking photos.

But it would be a mistake to see those certificates as just paperwork marking the end of a training course. In every step of their lives, there is a fierce struggle for survival that has only pushed them to the margins of society day after day. Our ‘well-ordered society’ never kept track of that struggle.

Caught in circumstances or becoming victims of compulsion, these women once had to get involved in sex work. Transcending the familiar boundaries of the life they had to accept due to destiny, they are now in search of a new identity.

So calling the rooms of this dilapidated building just a ‘training center’ would be quite an understatement. The initiative is primarily by the Kalyanmoyee Nari Sangha. The organization has not only provided them with training in sewing and handicrafts but has also taken up the responsibility of looking after their children safely by creating alternative employment and income-generating avenues for them. It is not hard to guess that the children seen at the beginning are their children. Currently, there are a total of 39 children there.

One of the people behind this entire initiative is Ahmed Fahmi, Executive Director of Give Bangladesh. Through his work, he has had the opportunity to see the lives of these women from very close. Initially, the scope of the work was very small. Under a project named ‘Project Lorai,’ the first sewing training began with only eight women using their own funding. The project is a part of a rehabilitation program for sex workers named ‘Purbo-Poshchim.’

Over time, it grew. Now they're running their 27th batch, with about 22 women in each one. So far, around 249 women have completed the training.

From the beginning of the initiative to the end, one name kept surfacing repeatedly, "Rina Apa." Not just Fahmi or the other organizers, a strange reliance and devotion could also be seen on the faces of the women coming for training when calling the name "Rina Apa." Although the name itself is not altogether unfamiliar in the media world.

Finding women involved in sex work and persuading them to leave that life is far from easy. The person who made it possible and the organisation’s main source of support in this difficult work is its president, Rina Akter.

When she was just eight years old, brokers lured Rina Akter's family with the promise of giving her a job as a domestic worker in a good house in Dhaka city. Living in extreme poverty, her family could not refuse. She was handed over to the brokers. But right after that, she was kidnapped and sold straight to a brothel.

"I wasn't old enough to understand anything then. They kept selling me from one brothel to another. First Faridpur, then Mymensingh...then one day I ran away from there and came straight to Sadarghat in Dhaka. At the floating level," Rina Akter recounted her days of struggle effortlessly in a very calm voice.

Then, at one point, she left that profession and completely devoted herself to their rehabilitation work. After giving volunteer service for a few years as an outreach worker in NGOs like CARE Bangladesh, Rina finally established ‘Bachte Chai’. From this center, she provided information on HIV, counseling and contraceptives through floating sex workers.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. There was fear of death everywhere. The lockdown brought life to a standstill. For floating sex workers across Bangladesh, it brought something close to famine. There were no clients. There was no food.

Society and the state indeed had forgotten them that time, Rina Akter did not. Using her own savings and help from acquaintances, she provided food to hundreds of starving sex workers every day. In 2020, Rina Akter secured a place in the BBC's list of the world's 100 most inspiring and influential women.

However, while working during those days, a major shift occurred in her thinking as well. Not temporary help through relief, something needed to be done to change the lives of these women permanently. From that thought, the sewing training center was launched in 2021. The initiative started with just eight women and personal donations from their own board of directors.

Bangladesh is one of the few countries in South Asia where sex work is legally valid. The only potential restriction in this regard is found in the country's constitution. Article 18 of the Constitution of Bangladesh states that the state shall take effective measures to prevent prostitution and gambling. So, although prostitution is not encouraged in Bangladesh, it is not banned either.

The struggle for survival of sex workers in Bangladesh is primarily of two types. One group lives in brothels, while the other group is floating, working on streets and in parks. There are also residential hotel based sex workers.

Rina Akter's rehabilitation activities primarily focus on floating sex workers.

Young girls are often brought from different parts of the country by brokers or traffickers and sold to the ‘queen’ or ‘madam’ of a brothel and a massive burden of a fake loan is thrust upon their shoulders. Until that imaginary loan is repaid, they are forced to work without pay for years. Even when that amount is repaid, perhaps a meager portion of the earnings is given to the girls. But they do not have any permission to go outside the boundaries of the brothel.

"If you want to bring a girl out of that brothel and into a normal life, you literally have to buy her from the madam. The system or institution of that place is so strong that it is not possible for an ordinary organization like ours to go there and bring someone out," says Fahmi.

Rina herself selects the women for the training through a specific screening process.

There is a common belief that given the opportunity, all sex workers would leave the profession and return to a ‘normal life’. That is not entirely untrue. But there are exceptions.

Fahmi stated that out of their 271 graduates so far, about 60 to 65 per cent of women have permanently left the profession. The remaining 30 to 40 per cent of women have returned to the old world.

"When a woman enters this profession at a young age, her average monthly income is between 20,000 to 35,000-40,000 takas, and in some cases, up to 50,000 takas. But if they get a job in a local garment factory after taking training from an NGO, their monthly salary is 8,000-10,000 takas, at most 12,000-15,000 thousand takas. It is not possible for many women to accept this massive financial shortfall at the end of the month. As a result, facing poverty or suddenly falling for the temptation of some work, many return to the old profession."

Many of these women do not have national identity cards because they were trafficked and forced into the profession at a very young age. As a result, large and established garment factories are often unwilling to hire them.

So, after training, the organisation helps them find work at small local factories, where they sew jeans or attach zippers and buttons. Some have started small businesses of their own. Others have joined NGOs as frontline workers.

At present, each batch has 22 floating sex workers undergoing training. Of them, a UK-based organization of expatriate Bangladeshis named 'Pushpa' is bearing the financial expenses of 12 individuals through the brand 'Khanum's'. The Alokananda Foundation has taken responsibility for the remaining 10.

Falguni Ahmed, acting portfolio manager at Give Bangladesh, said they also run another project called ‘Bagh-Bidhoba’, which works with widows who have lost their husbands to tiger attacks in the Sundarbans. Instead of simply giving them one-time financial assistance or relief, the organisation helps them become self-reliant, for instance, by setting up a small shop, providing a sewing machine or buying clothes for them to sell.

The same ‘long-term and sustainable’ rehabilitation model is now being applied to floating sex workers.

The project also organises special medical camps. Years of an unstable lifestyle, lack of awareness and the unhealthy use of pills or injections for contraception expose these women to various health complications. As floating sex workers, they also face a high risk of HIV infection.

Volunteer doctors attend the camps and speak to each woman separately and confidentially. After medical examinations, the organisation provides them with medicines free of charge based on the doctors’ prescriptions.

All of them undergo HIV screening, and most test negative. In the few cases where women from different batches tested positive, arrangements were also made for their full treatment.

Recently, 12 women from each batch have also been receiving screening at Mugda Medical College Hospital for serious diseases such as cervical and breast cancer.

Rina Akter knows very well that the path back to the light is not at all smooth after spending a period of life in society's darkest alleys. While doing rehabilitation work for these women, she has had to face obstacles and adversities at every step.

"Those of us who are coming out of this profession have a lot of history behind us, many unspoken words. When I picked up these girls and started working, I faced a lot of obstacles from the people of the area and local politicians. Many even gossiped outside, saying this was my new 'business', that I was doing business using them, that I was a broker!"

Rina Akter did not step back even after hearing all these derogatory remarks and slanders. One group of people in society thinks prostitution should be completely banned. Yet another group wants it to be recognized as a profession. But Rina Akter knows reality very well. She knows this system will never completely stop. Some will fall into traps of love, some will fall victim to trafficking, and some will keep coming into this dark world out of the need to feed their stomachs.

"Even so, I want to see my work reach a much larger scale. Right now, our girls are working in small outside factories. But my future desire is that we ourselves will build a large factory. Our own girls will work in that factory."

Not just in Mugda, Rina Akter plans to reach out in the future to those girls from Sadarghat to the hotel districts who are now living a subhuman life in a floating state due to evictions or police raids.

Falguni joined this project in 2024 during the graduation of the 13th batch. Currently, work is ongoing for the 27th batch. From this long experience, Falguni says, "We have to talk to them very sensitively. When they are asked anything about their previous profession, they feel very ashamed. They lower their heads.”

They are not looking for any special word for themselves in society. They just want an identity like any other ordinary woman in society," she said.