School girls takeover commercial sex work in Kumasi

Prostitutes in Kumasi say their future is threatened by the activities of new entrants, mostly students, who are taking over their business. They say the rate at which Junior and Senior High School students even in boarding schools are competing with their adult counterparts must raise concern not only for the night ladies but parents as well. The sex workers are worried efforts to restrain teenagers from active sex have yielded no positive results. Some of the prostitutes, who spoke to Nhyira FM’s Ohemeng Tawiah, said all efforts to dissuade the teenagers from engaging in the business have failed. According to them, explanations that prostitution is a hazardous job which paid very little were met with questions of why they should be practicing the trade if it didn’t pay. Older people in the business are adopting all manner of measures to reclaim their market after the younger girls proved to be better competitors. They forcibly prevent potential clients from negotiating with their younger nemesis. The Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service say their attention has been drawn to the growing menace of child prostitution. They however say they do not have the capacity to help the girls even if the police were to arrest them. While DOVVSU expresses hopelessness over the matter, the future of many girls, who should be in school studying to improve their productive capacity, remains hanging in the balance and Ghana is the worse for it. Credit: Ohemeng Tawiah