By Adah Mansaray
Taxi drivers and Keke riders in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown want government to reduce sex workers on the streets. Girls with age range of 14 and 15 are in large numbers in brothels, pubs, night clubs and bars to eke a living.
Such influx, if left uncontrolled, will sabotage President Maada Bio’s human capital development agenda. “We are transporting these girls here and there every night, and most of them are school girls who are supposed to sit in their homes taking lessons or reading books,” a driver, Momoh Kallon said.
For free education to hold, Kallon says, the young prostitutes must be taken off the streets, and a sound sex education project can be rolled out to put them on guard. With sex education, the girls could be made aware of the hazards of sexually Transmitted infections.
In an exclusive interview, 17-year old Alice explained her ordeals to Nightwatch about how her aunt pushed her into prostitution.
According to Alice, her aunt threw her out of the house after her father left for Senegal and had cause to put up with friends who lured her into the commercial sex industry.
In other to survive, Alice recounted, she joined her peers in sex-for-money schemes although she is aware of the health risks. Survival in the city is hard, and life is on the cutting edge.
She says, as sex workers, they move out to attract men and always physically appears attractive and good in bed to appease men. She maintains that most of them on the trade are pleased especially when most are young girls, adding that due to poverty and joblessness.
“Sometimes, I have to be on the streets till morning to offer sex to different men for me to have enough to take care of myself” she emphasised.
Alice however pleads with government to create job opportunities and adult education that will help in reducing sex workers on the streets.
A house wife, Asma Bah spoke about her only son but never engaged on prostitution but believed that many young girls get into prostitution to make ends meet.
According to Asma, women engage in prostitution to make money so that they can provide for their needs. She said the increase of poverty rate was alarming but girls that were not disciplined engaged into other meaningful activities to make money.
Some young ladies, she went on, were in school with no parental support or any other means of funds to fend for themselves and they see prostitution as a means of survival and continuity of their education.
Bah further explained that laziness and thirst for quick wealth is the main cause of prostitution. The youth are lazy and do not want to engage themselves in work or skills.
Government, she concludes, must come to their aid and provide job facilities and safe homes for the homeless sex workers so that they can see prostitution as a work not worth going into.