This story in the Standard made good reading: Peddlers of flesh get a touch of class
My only problem with the story is that it tries to evoke horror and suffering, but evidence to the contrary is present right there in the article:
A college student known by her trade name of Brandy, who plies her trade from a girls’ hostel in the city, confided to us that she makes up to Sh35,000 in a week when business is good.
“It a thrilling business,” she says. “I was forced into it due to hardship and the harsh living conditions, and now I pay my own fee and still have something left over to send to my mother who is a widow.“
Her mother believes that she is the beneficiary of a lucrative internship with an international NGO in the city.
(Nice touch I must say, claiming to work for an NGO)
Apparently it is shocking that the business is a lucrative one:
In a shocking revelation, one of the bureaus alleges to pocket close to Sh300,000 a day from the services delivered by some of the 20 girls in its stable.
A regular office worker earning KSH 30,000 a month pays income tax to the government. A prostitute earning more than the office worker lives on a tax-free salary.
Either way you look at it: there is little incentive for a prostitute to change professions, and the government loses out on tax revenues.
I do agree with you, there is an ugly side of the trade that isnt shown in this article. By reading this piece, I too would want to be a hooker!
Legalise that ish, man! I needs me some of that mullah. Say, 35k a week? I am willing to “work” for an NGO too!
That investigative report was really a commercial for those companies. Yeah, I looked them up. I get the feeling that it’s trendy to be a bisexual professional. Anyway, what’s wrong with being a prostitute? Legally there’s nothing wrong with being a john, so it makes no sense how only one half of the equation is illegal.
I second the ‘legalise it’ motion.
I have almost never heard of a mentally and physically happy and healthy prostitute. I have looked and looked and looked, I haven’t found them.
In Japan, prostitutes use drugs and go to host clubs to get lied to and flattered by hosts (btw should you have the means watch the movie “The Great Happiness Space -Tale of an Osaka Love Thief”-Japanese are amazing)
Throughout the West they are always in and out of jail and use drugs like they are going out of style.
I think the mental aspects of prostitution should definitely be weighed and evaluated, even above the money, when deciding about how to react to prostitution.
My 0.02
Mwangi:
Yeah, but there are risks associated with every vocation – mining, road construction, hard physical labor, chemical industries, hi-rise window cleaning – yet all these fields of work are recognized and protected under law (however strong or weak that law may be). No one is preventing these people from doing such work, or telling them what they are doing is wrong.
I have worked in the petro-chemical industry for a while, and I can tell you incidences of drug-abuse and alcholism are extremely high too. Yet no one is talking about banning petrochemical workers are they ?
As kanyoni above says…this is being treated like a crime, when there isnt a victim.