Makawanpur (Pahichan) January 5 – One day program was organized at seminar hall of Makawanpur District Development Committee about the policy and access to development of minority group. Women, children and marginalized community were key participants of program. A data showed that there are 213793 female and 206684 male in the district and total population is 4, 36089.

However, the population of gender and sexual minority was not presented at the program. Though the rights of gender and sexual minority are ensured by new constitution, state mechanisms have systematically removed or missed the existence this community from government report. Transgender participants said though government is providing citizenship and passport as per their gender identity, the issue is missed because it has not been addressed during census process in the district.

Suraj Thapa of Blue Diamond Society Chapter Friend’s Hetauda said state mechanisms are still discriminating the gender and sexual minority. “Transgender who are receiving passports under gender category has not been incorporated in census,” said Thapa.  “Please think, why this community which is receiving passport and citizenship are not incorporated in population segmentation,” Thapa said.

He satirically said, “I want to inform that Ajita Bhjuel who received passport from District Administration under O category has gone missing from this population.”  He said people’s identity, citizenship and census records are import but members of this community are not included while conducting census.

“We are very aggressive because our identity has been lost. It is the age of counting number of trees, tiger and other animals but it is matter of shame because identity of gender and sexual community is not recorded,” he said.

He said such mistakes would deny rights to the members of this community. He advised the district administration to address the issue of this community in coming days. He urged not to take it as a technical issue like the mistakes done to mention budget in local development programs. “It is about the rights of gender and sexually community, it is about life,” Suraz said. He said from VDC to policy making level, the issue of this community should be accommodated.

 Like male and female, transgender is also born my father and mother and it is natural phenomenon and it is not possible to alter. The family which has not transgender now may receive such members in the future. In the development projects, it is necessary to formulate separate programs and policy accommodating this community which helps to end discrimination at family and local level.