Kolkata, May 1 (IANS) Over 3,500 sex workers took out a candle-light rally shortly after midnight to press for their rights and social recognition as labourers on the occasion of Labour Day Thursday. “We took out the rally from Sonagachi area (Kolkata’s largest red-light district), and finally converged at College Square at around 2 a.m. Thursday.

“We held this rally in demand of our social rights as sex workers,” Bharati Dey of Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), an NGO working for sex workers’ rights told IANS.

She said sex workers were often treated as a blot on civil society and despite working so hard they hardly get any respect by people.

DMSC is a forum exclusively of sex workers and their children. In July 1995, a group of sex workers from Sonagachi had set up the committee to create solidarity among sex workers.

“We have been fighting for the cause since past 16 years across the country but nothing has been changed, as far as the lives of sex workers are concerned. They are still to come out of the dark lanes of the red light pockets,” Dey said.