Surat AIDS workers go gay-hunting

[Guest guest]

Surat AIDS workers go gay-hunting

7 Jan 2008, 0350 hrs IST, Hitarth Pandya ,TNN

SURAT: Guess what hundreds of social workers in the field of HIV, AIDS awareness

in the city are working on these days? They are actually learning some of the

basic knowledge about how to identify gays.

The reason is the nation-wide shift from phase-II of National AIDS Control

Programme to phase-III initiated by the National AIDS Control Organisation. In

phase-III the core group includes male having sex with male (MSM), sex workers

and injecting drug users (IDU) in its phase-III.

While most of the non-government organisations have wrapped up their on-going

projects citing funds crunch, those who have been permitted to continue their

projects are now looking for gays since the trend of injecting drug is not

prevalent in Surat. Those who are in the field work maintained that they have no

option but to follow the NACP guideline irrespective of whether they are

comfortable with it or not.

Interestingly, some of the NGOs have actually given up their projects simply it

goes against their ideology. " There are some organisations which admitted that

they would prefer to back out from such projects. Their argument is that they

would not like to directly interact with sex workers or gays instead of target

groups including youths. "

" We have been categorically told to work on core group only with no room for

argument, we have started working on gays. Though, we do not have any training

to deal with them since all these years we have been dealing with truckers and

single male migrants, " said a social worker.

Earlier, Surat Municipal Corporation's, STD Care had already cited serious

repercussions of avoiding migrants in NACP-III saying that the volume of migrant

youths approaching them is too high to be ignored.

" It is going to be a question of survival for large number of social workers.

Many who were holding the position of project officers have already opted for

other prospective jobs considering the future of the projects which is hanging

in the air at the moment. Those who have either decided to continue or selected

by the state aids control society have already started learning the trick of the

trade or basics of dealing with gays in other words, " said a project officer.

hitarth.pandya@...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Surat_AIDS_workers_go_gay-hunting/articleshow\

/2679567.cms