With a mission to provide sanitary pads to the marginalised women and encourage conversations around menstrual hygiene, an IRS officer engaged with the Income Tax Department in Delhi, Amanpreet Pasi, has distributed more than 12 lakh sanitary pads in 17 states during the coronavirus-induced lockdown. With the help of an NGO, Sangini Saheli, run by her friend, Priyal Bhardwaj, Amanpreet also distributed food packets among the migrant labourers at railway stations and bus stands. The IRS officer visited many states including Rajasthan, UP, Punjab, Telangana, Karnataka, Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat and West Bengal with her team to help the needy people during the coronavirus pandemic. Her efforts have got her the name — ‘Didi’. “Didi, I don’t know which officer you are. But I can never forget the help that I and my friends have got from you. This has proved to be a boon for us because we workers hardly understand women and the problems related to it. You are like a big sister to me,” said a female migrant labourer, sitting with her husband and three children, in the slums of Kalyanpuri, Delhi.
Speaking on her initiatives, Amanpreet said that she got the inspiration to help others from her mother. “My mother used to help all the women in spite of being a jailer. She used to put those, who used to bother her, to duty in a temple, Mosque or Gurudwara,” she said. Amanpreet informed that she has also distributed sanitary pads to the sex workers working in GB Road, Delhi. So far, I have distributed more than 12.5 lakh sanitary pads. In Delhi’s Madhu Vihar police station, Amanpreet, along with Delhi Police and Kinnar Akhada chief Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, distributed the Hygiene Kit and Ration Kit to the transgender.