Legalise prostitution � councillors

Commenting last Thursday on the address to full council by Silence Kills, a support group that revealed appalling commercial sex work in Selebi-Phikwe in which even schoolgirls as young as 13 are involved, Councillor Koos Mashaba said in addition to legalising commercial sex work, government should provide places of operations (brothels) for the trade and issue licences for practitioners because suppressing it has proved difficult to win.

 Afterall, Mashaba noted, some countries had legalised commercial sex work. Prohibiting it was impossible because prominent people, among them professionals and influential members of the community who had cash power, were driving it. Only those who traded on highways were easy targets for the hopeless effort to fight prostitution, but the trade was bigger than this small and vulnerable group. “Accord commercial sex workers the dignity they deserve,” he said.