A GNA Feature by Irene Kpobi, National Service Personnel

Ho, May 21, GNA - The suggestion that prostitution should be legalized is sure to evoke wild responses from different people. Many would condemn it outright and if given the opportunity pack all prostitutes and their clients into the inferno never to come back to live among the "righteous".

Yet there are a few others who would come plain that women, who wanted to offer sex for cash should be registered and licensed to do so. While the holders of these two opinions, lunge at each other over, who is right, the numbers of prostitutes in our cites are increasing fast and the phenomenon is spreading into smaller towns on the quiet. That argument is an age old one and would never end. While opposing opinion holders raved at each other, this Writer decided to visit popular spots in Accra to assess the situation on the ground. The first stop was at "Soldier Bar" near Kwame Nkrumah Circle. It has been busted on a number occasions but it bounces back. Not even when TV cameras were taken there and the girls arrested and taken for rehabilitation.

The Bar at 2130 hours one Saturday that this Writer visited was full of activity. Many of the young girls said they were "spreading for men for a fee" because of economic reasons.

Puffs of cigarettes smoke whirled over their heads as the girls in scanty and transparent dresses paraded the bar and its environs while "johns" lurked in the dark peering and picking the dames for 'short-time' and overnight sessions in the shacks or wherever.

The impression that "Soldier Bar" was the only place to go for prostitutes at the Nkrumah Circle soon filtered away when this Writer discovered that many women were lurking in the dark alleys and streets nearby waiting to be picked for sex. These appeared much more older, matured and composed.

Some of those who granted interview to this Writer described prostitution as their part-time job. They are hairdressers, dressmakers, traders, secretaries, students and clerks by the day and prostitutes by night.

A student, who gave her name only as Akesi said she was practising prostitution with other colleagues, aged between 15 years and 25 years to help them to pay hostel fees; buy handouts and also feed as what their parents provided them were inadequate.

Akesi said some of her friends were sponsoring themselves and schooling must go on so they have to find the money in the night at the sex markets.

There are other spots in the capital city where prostitutes work. There are sitters at the sprawling dormitories of Nima, Lagos Town and Sahara (Adabraka). Their modus operandi is to sit in front of their rooms waiting for clients.

At Ashaimanm, behind a Police Station, is an enclave of a group of "sitters". They sit at their doors and follow clients, who walk in for business and come to sit at the door again after servicing them. Here the prices varied between those who would use condoms and those who would not.

From all indications the job is good for the distressed woman, who daily has to choose between "spreading for a client" in the night and going hungry the next day.

The trade has developed and assumed international dimensions as many Ghanaian prostitutes spill over across the borders into Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and other West African countries and even to Europe. In Nigeria, Ghanaian prostitutes are called "Our ECOWAS Sister".

The business is catching on in smaller towns as evidenced by the recent arrest of suspected prostitutes and a brothel owner at Ho. The purview of this article is not to pass judgment but to attempt to give a graphic account of the situation, to ignite polemics on how to tackle it, more so, with experts saying that alongside "prostitution rings are crime rings".

Mr Peter Hlovor Programme Head for the Volta Regional Branch of Child Rights Promotion and Protection, a unit under the Social Welfare Department, said even though prostitution was not acceptable in society it would be appropriate to tackle this issue by first going into the causes and the reasons that engendered it.

He explained that prostitution couldn't be forced out of the system because of the possibility of it generating into social conflict, since it also served the interest of certain people. Mr Hlovor said some of the issues that led to the act could be economic pressures, peer pressure, broken homes and lack of parental control.

Other young people suggested that attention be focused on issues that dragged women into prostitution.

They listed harassments for sex by well-placed people in return for jobs and sex for marks at schools as perhaps a bigger moral problem for the nation

"Men take advantage of women in every situation and some women knowing it, dangle sex before men, to manipulate them," Mrs Mavis Frimpong, a Caterer said. To her prostitution is a problem, but the bigger problem was the propensity among men in Ghana to use women as sex tools while women's groups sat back without protesting.

"We have to do something now or sooner than later every woman would be branded as a prostitute," Mrs Frimpong stated Prostitution must be tackled in a holistic manner and quickly too before the problem overwhelms the nation.