... And Spread HIV/AIDS For Cash

ON THE occasion of Ghana's Golden Jubilee year when God almighty has blessed the nation with the discovery of oil, the oldest profession in the world; PROSTITUTION has suddenly become a thriving business across the nook and crannies of the capital. The pain and embarrassment of it all is that even religious leaders, opinion leaders and social commentators pretend nothing of the sort is cooking and instead, prefer sinking their teeth into less disturbing issues.

But just like the status quo during Jesus Christ's day, so-called moralists have skipped the ethos of the matter by choosing to discuss the lisk, rather than the kennel in a potentially explosive HIV-AIDS epidemic era.

THE SUN has discovered that high and low prostitutes begun sharpening their wares for sale across the length and breadth of the country way back in November last year, when for starters Christmas promised to be a sumptuous meal on their menu. And so when December, potentially a month when almost everybody goes morally-lose came tumbling in with all its yuletide goodies, prostitutes countrywide sung hallelujah to hellish Satan.

That marked the beginning of a busy and money-making time for state agencies seized the opportunity to drum home the highly-publicised GHANA@50 celebrations in March of 2007. Shopping for fanciful clothes began in earnest, for it became fashionable for these vice-girls to dress to kill if only it would sweep the morally-depraved off their feet. To further blacken the night, a bunch of roguish elements with a permanent abode in hell in the shape and form of HOMOSEXUALS, identified Koforidua of all places to hold a World Confab. That was a side-show to the itinerary of the call girls, for by January this year, they had assumed real control of the immoral trade and had out-run, out-boxed, and out-foxed the security agencies who were supposed to sweep the society clean of these nauseating miscreants.

THE SUN can confirm that the last time the routine exercise of rounding-up prostitutes was undertaking, J.J. Rawlings was getting ready to boot late President Hilla Limann out of the Osu Castle by the usage of the unauthorized route. If doubts remain, readers may ask themselves the last time the exercise of swooping call girls and lining them up before Court was undertaken.

And while the security agencies play the three 'wise' Monkeys who pretended never to have SEEN, FELT and therefore left UNADRESSED what profanity surrounded them, the prostitutes have rather grown sophisticated in their manner of operation Today, no more do they stand out in the open just like they did in times-past at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle.

Indeed a joint at the Circle just beneath the Overhead where an ex-soldier pretends to be running a drinking spot (just adjacent a smell gutter) looks to be the headquarters for cheap prostitutes. They charge as low as ¢50,000 which is Gh¢5 per session of just about 30 strokes of waist wriggling, during which the loaded come ought to spray by ejecting from the male's system otherwise macho-men body guards could have the right to remove the pimp off the prostitute's womanhood. Undercover work conducted by THE SUN revealed that gradually, the element of unprotected sex is fading off but it still prevails among those of the vice girls who smoke cigarettes and ganja openly at the joint. That goes with the increased price of ¢30,000 more cedis for all the dangers.

The Odawna Park, new market and the Circle Lorry Park are also fertile areas for low class prostitutes to hang on about. There is also the interesting issue of the prostitute and the pimp banging themselves away atop the new overhead late at midnight, while Churches nearby congregate in praise of the Lord-God. All this while, middle-class prostitutes would have been engaged in hotels and other social joints nearby with patronisers of their 'wares', in sordid battles of sex for cash. Sophisticated prostitutes rather dress well except that they leave room for pimps to get a hint of their availability, if indeed they are game and ready.

They spot the big ear rings and wafting aromatic perfume which can be scented half a mile away. Quite a few do the rounds with taxi cab drivers who pick them and the clients at an appointed time. The high societal prostitutes operate outside of the noisy Kwame Nkrumah Circle area around Labone, The Togo Embassy, East and West Legon, Adabraka, Dansoman, Airport Residential and Roman Ridge areas. The more sophisticated strike appointments with clients and use either their premises or that of the clients who either pay after full sessions, or pay upfront by cash on the basis of the trust between them. THE SUN's worry has to do with two areas of concern.

First remains the calibre of humans parading as prostitutes who are evidently in their youthful ages at a time the nation ought to gain economically from their sweat and good toil. The grounds are shifting from hairdressers, seamstresses, secretaries to CEOs to students in all the different segments of the second cycle and tertiary institutions, expected to be the intelligentsia to shoulder Ghana's burden. Last March when Ghana grew more gray hairs at 50, the President John Agyekum Kufuor announced that the Golden Jubilee celebration was going to be all-year round. That made the prostitutes believe that it was going to be Christmas all-year round. The just-ended AU Summit too came as a wonderful opportunity for them to latch on to new and foreign clients.

But the calendar looks hardly exhausted. With the approaching Non-aligned Conference, several other holidays dotted on the nation's calendar and worst of all, next January's CAN 2008 Championship it appears Satan has issued a blank cheque to agents of this thriving business. Will the state continue to turn a blind eye while the youth waste away their youthfulness desired elsewhere to help propel the national economy to the heights of heaven? Will the state stand aloof as sex tourism gains a foothold where exactly God has just blessed us with oil?

Will the state stand idly by while all these immorality dovetails into several facets of the nation's life in an era of HIV/AIDS?

Now THE SUN knows that where God cooks his AMPESI (Oil) is exactly where Satan roasts his Koobi (prostitution).