WEB CHUTNEY

The Sweet Tooth is like any ice cream parlour in Lahore, they have delicious ice cream, great food at a good price and great customer service.

But what makes this parlour stand out from the rest is the staff hired.

Most people would shy away from hiring transgender but Umer Hussain the owner of the sweet tooth wanted to help the transgender community.

Umer told Pakistantoday

“It is high time that people start treating them as part of society – as normal people and not people that bring ‘dishonour’,”

“Shemales are usually bullied. They are thrown away by their parents when they are very young, or given to gurus. The only career choice most have is that of a dancer or a sex worker,”

There are 15 transgenders who will be working at the ice cream parlour. One of the trainees said:

“We are ready to learn if people are ready to teach,”

Another trainee says

“People are very intolerant, superficially they seem lenient towards us, but we are never given the needed support or acceptance.”

“We meet all kinds of people in our life, some worse than others some much better. Getting used to the problems is part of life,”

This isn’t the first initiative to hire a transgender person. The National College of Arts has hired several transgenders as cooks and office workers.

It’s great to see people becoming more accepting in our society and open minded, we hope this trend continues.