Sex workers inaccessible

GALE NGAKANE
Correspondent | Friday July 11, 2008 00:00

The workshop's main purpose was to roll out the National Operational Plan for Scaling Up HIV Prevention in Botswana to districts in the northern part of Botswana as well as to fine tune it. A similar workshop to cover the southern region is planned for Jwaneng this weekend, according to the National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) officials at the Tati River Lodge event.

The delegates spent a gruelling two days in group discussions, whose finding were finally announced by appointed individuals from the groups. The discussions were meant to plug the gaps in the plan to be known as Thebe le Segai (Shield and Spear) when it is branded.

Among the issues that repeatedly came up was that of inaccessibility of sex workers and that it was high time prostitution was legalised.

'The government must legalise prostitution so as to be able to identify them better. As long as commercial sex is not legalised, we are going to have a problem accessing sex workers,' said a delegate from Boteti who had been tasked with announcing the findings of her group.

Her counterpart from Masunga advocated the same approach, saying they were unable to reach the sex workers and their clients because their activities were shrouded in utmost secrecy.

To the awe and admiration of the fellow delegates, a representative from Francistown said they were well advanced when it came to accessing the sex workers.

'Currently, we have got between 200 and 250 sex workers. About 60 percent of them are Zimbabweans; we are incentivising 13 of them with P300 every month. We give them condoms to give to others.

'Also, we bring them to workshops where they speak about their experiences. The bottom-line is that since we are targeting sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs) for elimination, sex workers are some of the people who are vulnerable to it,' said the delegate.

Another issue that had the delegates in rapt attention was that of condom distribution with delegates saying places like cattle-posts and masimos did not have distribution points.

'Even here in towns and major settlements, there is still a problem of distribution of condoms because the machines that store the condoms in strategic places like bars are always empty or broken down. Do we expect condoms to grow out of the machines?' wondered one of the delegates.

Delegates from North East, Chobe and Okavango who said mother tongue should be used to relay the message of HIV/AIDS prevention to people who can speak neither Setswana nor English, raised the problem of language.

'In our area, we have got Kalanga, Ndebele, Shona besides Setswana. We have observed that in these communities children are being abused in their homes. We are going to use the local languages to empower community leaders to win them over so that they take appropriate action against such perpetrators,' said the delegate from Masunga.

The delegate also mentioned the fact that in the Kalanga culture, they know nothing about male circumcision - hence it is something that has to be inculcated into sexually active people in that area.

Other issues that were discussed, which were meant to plug the gaps in the plan, included couple testing where partners would be at loggerheads as to whether to test or not.

It was revealed that usually, it was the males who were fearful of testing, prompting the delegate from Masunga to exclaim: Banna ke magatlapa (men are cowards).

But the Masunga community was being lured to test during occasions such as Valentine's Day on February 14.

A delegate from Chobe said they are troubled by the fact that the clinic at Pandamatenga, a stopover for cross-border truck drivers, closes at 10pm and that is the time when truck drivers would normally be coming in.

'We need to make the clinic operate for 24 hours so that the drivers and their commercial sexual partners will be able to obtain condoms,' said the Chobe delegate.