PESHAWAR: The social welfare department of the North West Frontier Province started registering the transvestites here on Sunday on the directives of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Officials of the department started the registration process at the School for Blinds, Nanakpura. The process will continue for three days.

An official of the department said that on Monday teams would visit the localities of the provincial capital where the transvestites reside in large numbers.

He said that the same exercise would be undertaken in other districts of the province also. ‘We have to submit a detailed survey about the number of such like persons, their way of living, occupations, etc to the Supreme Court,’ the official said.

Some transvestites visited the registration point for registering themselves. The officials registered basic information regarding them including their names, addresses and occupation. On the first day only few of the community members turned up for registration.

The concerned official said that their number would increase in the next two days as on the first day they might not be aware about the registration process.

A full bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had ordered the four provincial governments to register the transgender population.

The order was issued first in June and then in July last over a petition filed by an Islamic jurist, Dr Aslam Khaki, seeking the establishment of a commission to emancipate effeminate men who are ostracised by the society for no fault of theirs.

The petitioner had filed the petition for the welfare of the unfortunate and vulnerable people left by the society to survive through begging, dancing and prostitution.

He took up their cause after police raided and arrested several transvestites in Taxila a few weeks ago.

The petitioner claimed that parents gave their hermaphrodite children into the care of gurus (leaders of transvestites) at a very tender age who abused them instead of providing them the opportunity to get education.

During last hearing on July 15 the Supreme Court had asked the federal as well as the provincial governments to help them overcome their financial difficulties by supporting them from the social welfare programmes like the Benazir Income Support Programme and Baitul Maal or provincial support programmes so that they could adopt a respectable livelihood.

The petitioner claimed that there were about 80,000 transvestites in Pakistan. The apex court is expected to take up for further hearing the petition during the third week of August.