Press Release Details

In a landmark step towards building a truly equitable industrial landscape, the MEPZ Special Economic Zone, hosted an Exclusive Job Fair for Transgender Persons on 10 December 2025 at the MEPZ Administrative Office, Tambaram, Chennai. The event forms a critical component of Project MEPZ Pride, a flagship initiative aimed at ensuring that the benefits of economic development reach all sections of society.

Why MEPZ Started: Bridging the Divide

Project MEPZ Pride emerged from a clear and urgent reality: despite India’s strong industrial growth, transgender persons remain among the most excluded groups in the formal workforce. As per the 2011 Census, India has 4.9 lakh identified transgender persons, with NGOs estimating a significantly higher population. Yet, a 2021 NHRC study reports that only 6% hold formal jobs, while 79% face daily discrimination.

Transgender individuals often experience hiring discrimination due to social stigma, interrupted education, lack of family support, and challenges with official documentation, despite legal protections under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. These barriers frequently result in early school dropouts and push many into informal occupations, further limiting access to stable opportunities. For industries, this exclusion represents not only a social inequity but a missed economic opportunity.

Project Pride is designed to transform the perception of the transgender community from one of vulnerability to one of talent and opportunity, creating structured pathways for their employment and workplace integration. The initiative also seeks to enable transgender individuals to access meaningful, dignified, white-collar employment by equipping them with industry-relevant skills, preparing them for formal corporate environments, and connecting them with employers committed to inclusive hiring.
The Strategy: Sensitizing and Equipping for Success

Project MEPZ Pride tackles the challenge from both the Demand (Employer) and Supply (Candidate) sides:

• Sensitizing the Workplace

MEPZ is working with its SEZ units to go beyond mere compliance and actively reduce unconscious bias. The initiative focuses on preparing employers to create truly inclusive workplaces. This includes encouraging companies to address infrastructure gaps, and ensuring hiring managers and recruiters receive anti-bias and sensitivity training.


• Preparing the Talent Pool

In collaboration with the Tamil Nadu Transgender Welfare Board, NGOs, and community-based organisations, MEPZ has been curating a motivated talent pool. Over the past months, 100+ profiles have been prepared, receiving targeted support that includes: professional, industry-relevant resume building, intensive pre-interview preparation, mock interviews, training on communication and soft skills and workplace readiness sessions to equip candidates to highlight their strengths and capabilities in alignment with employer expectations.

The Exclusive Job Fair brought together over 15 SEZ units, industry partners, and hiring managers committed to creating diverse and empathetic workplaces. Employers gained access to a well-prepared talent pool, supported through MEPZ’s end-to-end facilitation, while candidates encountered companies prepared to engage beyond bias.

Speaking after handing over the offer letters to selected candidates, Thiru. Alex Paul Menon, Zonal Development Commissioner, MEPZ, stated:

“Diversity today is not an act of charity but a strategic necessity that drives innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth. Dignity lies at the core of this initiative, and our aim is to ensure that transgender individuals find meaningful, respectable white-collar opportunities. This is not a one-time effort but the beginning of a sustained practice that will evolve into an institutional mechanism for long-term inclusion.”

Project MEPZ Pride is not a one-day initiative but the beginning of a sustained, multi-stakeholder effort. MEPZ aims to establish a national benchmark for transgender-inclusive employment across the SEZ ecosystem in Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Puducherry (TAP) region by building a network of sensitised industries capable of hiring, training, and retaining transgender professionals. The initiative seeks to create a growing talent pipeline supported by welfare boards, NGOs, and industry partnerships, while fostering workplace cultures where transgender individuals can secure not just jobs but long-term careers, dignity, and leadership opportunities.

(Release ID: 2201857)