Pakistan: Transgenders make their presence felt at the workplace

Dressed in women's attire and a nose-pin errantly positioned on one nostril, 38-year-old Shahzadi adjusts her 'dupatta' (scarf) over her head as she enters the office of Cantonment Board Clifton, a provincial government bureau that recently hired her. With a delicate, fading orange henna pattern on her hands, pink nail polish and colorful glass bracelets around her wrist, Shahzadi can easily pass for a woman in this male-dominated office. She can indeed, except for the fact "the national identity card has a picture of me as a female but my gender states I'm a male!" explained the transgender. The cantonment board, which looks after civic amenities, has the difficult task of recovering municipal taxes and fees from absconding residents or from those whose commercial outlets in the affluent Clifton area here in the southern port city of Karachi, have outstanding dues.