Sindh PA passes bill to reserve job quota for transgenders

KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed into law the Sindh Civil Servants (Amendment) Bill-2021 for reserving a 0.5 percent quota in the jobs of the Sindh government for the members of the transgender community.

Sindh Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Mukesh Kumar Chawla, presented the bill in the house. After the adoption of the bill, the Sindh government has become the first government in the country to reserve a job quota for the marginalised transgender community.

“The transgender people are a marginalised and vulnerable segment of our society. The history of the transgender community in Pakistan is fraught with violence, socio-political exclusion, economic inequality/insecurity and emotional insensitivity.

In this respect, it is essential to empower and include such a vulnerable and weak community in the mainstream of society and for this purpose, it has been decided by the government of Sindh to reserve a 0.5 percent quota for transgender, hence it is expedient to amend the Sindh Civil Servants Act, 1973,” said the draft of the bill.

The House was informed that the power crisis would continue to linger in Karachi till the time the present regime was able to come out of the fallout of the defective policies of the past government for the power sector.

Sindh Energy Minister, Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh, stated this while responding to a call attention notice by an opposition woman lawmaker on the worsened situation of electricity in Karachi. Speaking on her call attention notice, MPA of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Adeeba Hassan, said that persisting electricity crisis had agonised the lives of the people of Karachi.