Sex workers seek State recognition

Sex workers are pushing for recognition of their business in exchange for paying taxes.

The business is an untapped industry, an association of the workers said on Tuesday.

“We want it looked at as a financial muscle rather than a moral blow and that it is employing hundreds, if not thousands, of souls,” Africa Sex Workers’ Alliance regional director Doughtie Ogutu said.

She went on: “Sex workers deserve protection from the State.”

Ms Ogutu noted that Aswa was for those who chose to stay in sex work rather than those struggling to get out of it.

The experience, the beatings, killings or even compulsion for them to engage in unnatural acts with animals influenced the formation of the organisation to campaign for their safety, she said.

“We often ask sex workers if they want to get out and do something else and we support those who want to get out and point them to that direction by putting them in contact with support groups,” Ms Ogutu told the Nation. “But to those who say they don’t want to get out but want those issues addressed, we often say, ‘here we have work to do’, we know here is where we need to talk to authorities, policy makers and all.”

Although they choose to stay in it, she noted, sex work is a dangerous business. She recalled a case eight years ago when a colleague left the country with a foreign client but returned dead. It was a case of sexual enslavement, she reckons.

There have also been claims of prostitutes being forced into sex acts with animals.

Although the alliance has been campaigning against their members being forced into such acts, the organisation argues that the main actors have been left to roam freely.

“Those girls don’t do it because they like it. They were forced into it. It is because these women are not protected. Their clients lie that they will pay them, but after arriving at their homes, where no one can even hear you screaming, what do you do?” she posed.

Ms Ogutu said Aswa was expanding from the initial 10 countries and moving into west and central Africa.

However, its influence in Kenya has been met with resistance. In March last year, its Kenyan affiliate, Kenya Sex Workers Alliance staged a demonstration in Nairobi streets, demanding that they be recognised in exchange for paying taxes.

But a city council committee formed by the then Mayor George Aladwa to check on the feasibility of legalising prostitution returned a negative verdict.

Chaired by former Deputy Clerk Daniel Masetu and drawing some of its members from the alliance, the committee’s report stated that prostitution would remain illegal but that council askaris and the police should handle suspects humanely.

“The police and council officers should make the arrests of suspected female sex workers in the company of female officers,” the report recommended.

The council, now Nairobi County, based its decision on a 2007 bylaw on “general nuisance” and the Penal Code, both of which outlaw making a living from the proceeds of prostitution. Sex workers contest this position.

They argue it is difficult to determine who actually lives from proceeds of prostitution since money exchanges hands and could rope in landlords, supermarkets and other places where prostitutes spend their money afterwards.

BENEFIT FROM PROCEEDS
“Our laws say something very weird. What that essentially means is that it is not me to be punished but a person benefiting from the money I got through sex work. That school I paid fees to, my landlord and any other person who got my money. How do you prove that this person got money through prostitution? You have to catch them in the act. How often do the police find women in sexual acts?” Ms Ogutu posed.

She said the report’s recommendations had not been implemented.

“I can’t say it has improved and I can’t say it has not. It is just the same old behaviour. Council askaris will always get away with how they treat sex workers on the streets because, even during our training activities, they often send in senior officers, not those on the ground,” she noted.

She went on: “At policy level, there are good things. At implementation level, there is a problem.”

There is another problem: When Aswa presented its application for registration, it was turned down because it had the word ‘sex’ in it.