The public mind loves sex particularly of the commercial variety.. Dhaka is exploding with escapades of all kinds and that includes the middle class..it’s not just the rich who are well into it but rest are too .. It’s inevitable when it’s a sign of class, culture and clout… As a journalist I have covered both sex and sex workers for long and as a public health communicator travelled to different parts of the world to work on projects and the attitude is no better.. It isn't called the Oldest profession by accident. Read:Sex workers face ruin amid virus fears, brothel closures I covered many topics for the BBC but of all the radio series I have done, instant fame came when I did a series on Bengali sexuality.  One incident is memorable. I got into a taxi in Kolkata and asked the guy to take me to Shonagachi, the city’s top “red-light “district as they are called. The driver took me straight to a building inside the area with ACs poking out of windows.  I asked, “why this building ? “ He said,” All Bangladeshis come to this building. They like AC sex.” We haillas love a bit of comfort don’t we ?. After all we are paying so why not do it while cool ?.   Tanbazar and Tangail In the mid 80s I was running Dhaka Courier when I/we got involved with the rights of the sex workers of Tanbazar . Rich people of the area wanted to evict them and grab the buildings. A girl became the leader of the movement and once she invited me to her room, such a functional room with just a bed and no other furniture.  The other girls would give this girl money so that she didn’t have to do sex work and she was fighting their cause full time. But as the rich and the powerful are both, someone knifed her to death. The movement more or less collapsed when it became obvious that members of both the Government and opposition parties were together in this to grab that property. Politics may divide us but money and greed unites. Journalists meet all kinds of people including sex workers and as expected are the same normal people we meet on the street. In fact, the sleazy rich are the worst who are the clients, the keepers, the whore-mongers as an ancient abuse term. Read: Left in the lurch by shutdown, sex workers seek govt help for survival Perhaps the finest human being I have met was a young girl who had left sex work but returned to it when here mother fell sick and there was none to look after.  She split her income three ways; one for herself to survive, another portion for her mother and the third for a group that worked to rescue girls from such work. How many of us can claim such sacrifice and nobility. Yet what we have been doing is demonize women and girls in the name of sex work at its extreme. These women are there because there is a demand. Very few go there by choice but the clients - poor , rich or middle , are there by choice. We have no problem with the consumers of sleaze, our problem begins with the victims. Bravo. 

The Cumilla Victoria College campus has been closed for over a year due to the pandemic.  About 25,000 students study in 22 departments of the degree branch of Comilla Victoria Government College. Poet Nazrul Islam Hostel and Nawab Faizunnesa Hall provide residential facilities to thousands of students. Besides, several thousand students live in rented houses in Dharmapur area. But the closed campus and dormitories are now a den for drug addicts and sex workers. Disregarding police patrols during the lockdown, drug dealers roam the college campus to sell drugs.  Read:Covid claims 10 more lives, infects 451 others in 24 hours in Cumilla The closed dormitories are occupied by sex workers and drug addicts during night time. College authorities say a police outpost in Dharmapur is needed to solve the problem. According to several reliable sources, outsiders enter the Kandirpar Higher Secondary Branch of the college by scaling the the walls at night and stay there taking drugs. Sex workers enter the closed building of the New Hostel in the dark of night. Drug addicts gather regularly behind the septic tanks and the toilets of the degree branch examination building and Zia Auditorium, in front of the Motaher Hossain Central Library building, on the ground floor of Kotha Bhaban, and in some special rooms of Science Bhaban-2. 

Even in the oldest profession in the world, they have seen nothing like it. Sex workers over the world have historically battled stigmatisation, outright bans or criminalisation, false accusations of spreading disease, and a general lack of respect from other sections of society.