GHANA: Sex girls try to score with footie fans
Sex workers are flocking to Ghana to cash in on the thousands of potential customers at the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, which opened in Accra on Sunday.
Prostitutes, mainly from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Liberia and Benin have already joined their Ghanaian ‘sisters’ on the streets of the four venues — Accra, Sekondi-Takoradi, Kumasi and Tamale — to do business.
“Hundreds of Nigerian girls suspected to be prostitutes are reported to have come in and rented apartments in Accra, where they will stay and work during the tournament,” Nathaniel Attoh of The Graphic Sports said.
According to Attoh, the largest numbers of ‘call girls’ are from Cote d’Ivoire and Togo, which share borders with Ghana.
Togo and Liberia are not playing at the tournament but prostitutes from those countries usually operate in Ghana, and their numbers are expected to increase during the soccer festival.
Meanwhile, reports from Accra indicate that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and some organisations have stumbled on plans to employ children for prostitution during the tournament.
Frank Adu Poku, director general of the CID, said: “International sporting events have become fertile grounds for human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children.”
He added: “We would fight to ensure zero tolerance for them here.”
Child rights activist Mr. Bright Appiah said that he also had information from Kumasi, one of the match venues, that ‘underground agents’ had been paid to employ sex workers, including children.
With the arrival of a large number of prostitutes, soccer fans, footballers and officials in Ghana, there is a rising fear of sexual promiscuity and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
According to the director general of the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), Professor Sakyi Awuku Amoa, the commission have started to distribute condoms to hotels that will host guests, “to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS during the tournament.”
“The GAC, with the help of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), will distribute 5,000 condoms to the hotels,”
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