Bhubaneswar, July 5: Many non-governmental organisations (NGO) have inflated the number of sex workers in the state to get funds from the Odisha State AIDS Control Society.

Interestingly, to get the funds, the NGOs have also termed home-makers as female sex workers.

Though it was detected by the society in March, it has been under the wraps till date. The issue has now come to notice through the Right to Information (RTI) Act by a social activist.

Information available under the RTI revealed that the National AIDS Control Organisation had given a report about a meetings of the society in which it is mentioned how the target population seems to be manipulated. “In some cases in Dhenkanal district, home-makers and community women have been mentioned as female sex workers which is unethical,” the report states.

What is more interesting is co-operation and excise department minister Damodar Rout, during his tenure as the health minister in May, also raised how the NGOs inflated the number of sex workers to get the funds.

As a health minister, he had also written a letter to the project director of the AIDS control society.

“I am told that an NGO has been appointed to work with 500 sex workers in Paradip. If it is true, the matter is serious, because I have been representing Paradip for the past 40 years, and I don’t have knowledge about sex workers operating at Paradip.”

Health minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak said: “Earlier, 56 NGO workers were working in the field to create awareness among the sex workers to combat the menace of AIDS. Now, based on the external evaluators’ report, the contracts of the 10 NGOs have been discontinued.”

Sources in the health department said that nearly Rs 40 crore had been released to these NGOs.

Besides, around Rs 138.59 crore have been spent since 2003 to create awareness on this issue. Now, the number of total sex workers stands out nearly at 11,650.

“We don’t know how the number of sex workers has increased over the years. A close monitoring system should be adopted to find out the exact number of sex workers. One will find manipulation,” said Avarani Choudhury, a social worker.

Social activist Rabi Das also demanded an inquiry on how the funds released to the NGOs had been misutilised. “Even in cases where there have been no NGOs, the funds have been released and swindled away. Only through a proper probe, it can be exposed,” he said.