The Tamil Nadu government on Monday appointed 25-year-old Anbu Ruby as the state’s first transgender staff nurse at a government hospital. While this appointment comes as a good news for the transgender community, for 23-year-old Rashika Raj, it is bittersweet. Rashika fought a legal battle to have ‘third gender’ included as a category in the registration forms at Tamil Nadu Nurses and Midwives Council (TNNMC), the statutory body for registering nurses in the state. However, she will have to wait at least three years if she wants to have a government nurse job for herself.
“I am very happy for Anbu Ruby. It is a step ahead for the entire community. I am very happy, don’t get me wrong,” she begins. “But the AIADMK government has done injustice to me,” she continues. “After months of trying to meet Minister for Health and Family Welfare C Vijayabaskar, I was finally able to do it on November 19. When I requested him for a job after registering myself as a trans woman nurse, I was asked to come back after passing Medical Services Recruitment Board exam,” she tells TNM.
The Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) exam is conducted once every three years. When the exam was held in June this year, Rakshika was with District Legal Service Authority (DLSA), trying to get her case filed at Madras High Court – she had stated in her petition that as per the Supreme Court order in 2014, transgender persons can apply for education and employment under the ‘other’ gender category.
The Madras High Court disposed of Rashika’s petition. Justice Jayachandran, who heard the case, asked the council to register her as a ‘transgender woman’ for now, till an official government order is passed on the same. On October 25, Rashika became the first person in India to register as a transgender nurse and midwife in the state of Tamil Nadu. However, she has not been able to get a job.
Even as she feels happy for Ruby now, Rashika says her future is bleak because the government is unwilling to consider her for a job despite the circumstances. Compelled to forgo the exam this year, Rashika will now have to wait three years to take the MRB exam which will allow her to be a nurse in a government hospital. “Passing the MRB exam isn’t a problem for me. If it were an annual exam, I wouldn’t have lost much time. But this is conducted once every three years. I have already lost 1.5 years of work experience because I was not able to register myself in the category that I wanted. This gap will be very damaging for my career,” she explains, “I fear losing my knowledge.”
Further, Rashika adds that getting a job in a private hospital is yet another battle. “I have been trying to find a job in private hospitals for about a year now, but I have not been successful, only because of my gender,” she says.
Source: The News Minute