Hope for Cheer Entertainers

Cheer entertainers today were today provided the platform to perform their talents together and express their pain at “The Bliss-Community event for the Cheer Entertainers” organised by the Meetei Leimarol Sinnai Sang and the Manipur State AIDS Control Society at Manipur Press club here.
“We are human beings. We need the feeling of human touch, our children is our hope. We need a window to express our feeling, emotion and hope. We need a passage to socialise.” was the slogan of the event.
M.C Reeta the chief functionary of Sinnai Sang NGO said no women willingly take up this path of flesh trade. If we have to understand their being we need to look into the economy, political and social environment of the state, she added.
Altogether 2,000 of the cheer entertainers are registered and out of which over 5, 00 of them were able to change their behaviour. The behaviour of commercial sex workers in Manipur can be changed through proper counselling, said Reeta.
We are trying to socialise them and change their thought and bring towards complete abstinence through this programme, said Reeta.
As we take our project in connection with HIV/AIDS we are trying to control the cheer entertainers spreading the HIV through them. The social stigma towards the HIV infected people is far more than towards the commercial sex workers. Even their children face the social discrimination, said Reeta.
These women became cheer tenders as a result of the arm conflict and using drugs that claimed their husbands’ life. Poverty is another cause guiding them to this so call anti social business, said a member of the NGO.
In the event the cheer entertainers gave cultural performances while some of them highlighted their sorrows.