Junor at left and Hamilton Glenda Anderson, Staff Reporter
HEALTH MINISTER John Junor has flatly rejected calls by the health and social work community for the setting up of a 'red light' district or safe zone for local prostitutes to allow for tighter monitoring of the trade.
"We don't agree," he said. "Any sort of exploitation or selling one's body is a form of slavery in this sense and we certainly don't support prostitution."
He also dismissed suggestions that the Ministry's extensive involvement in assisting sex workers was hypocritical given that prostitution was still illegal in Jamaica.
"The question of whether it's illegal or not is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. We (Health Ministry) cater to the needs of 'persons at risk' for the transmission of HIV/STDs. Whether for profit or for free, my concern is that they expose themselves and other persons," he said. "(On) The moral issue it is not that we are unconcerned... but the overriding factor is that they are persons at risk."
Since 1989, the Ministry of Health has been providing support for commercial sex workers (CSWs) in many areas. These include drop-in centres for HIV/STD testing and pap smear tests. The centres are a non-judgmental area where sex workers are offered counselling services, information about STIs including HIV, information regarding safe sex, including information on how to use male and female condoms. The Ministry also facilitates a commercial sex worker peer education programme, where former sex workers assist in the counselling of sex workers and also in getting them to visit the centres to be tested.
The success of the Ministry's intervention is quite evident. In 1994, 25 per cent of sex workers in St. James tested positive for HIV and another 34 per cent for syphilis. This, however, declined to 9.4 per cent in 1999, with a national prevalence rate of 6.1 per cent.
But Public Defender Howard Hamilton has taken issue with the Government's lopsided approach to dealing with sex workers.
"Commercial sex must not be confined to prostitution. There is, for example, transactional sex where young men and boys are induced to have sex for reward. It has taken on a new paradigm in that now it is a channel for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It's an even greater public health threat than prostitution and drugs," he said.
Despite the growing number and types of commercial sex workers (CSW), he said, there is still no specific law in place to monitor the trade, nor much attempt made by the police to deal with it.
In fact the police were unable to give figures on the current size, or the number of persons arrested for offences under the trade which is now projected to be steadily burgeoning in the Corporate Area and tourist regions of the island.
"There is only one law which deals with it and that's the Town and Communities Act, which states that every person who shall loiter in any public place and solicit any person for the purposes of prostitution, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding one thousand dollars.
The other which comes close is that relating to buggery."
Mr. Hamilton was among the group of civic activists calling for structured monitoring or 'regularising' of prostitution in its varied forms in Jamaica.
He supported the Ministry's efforts but called for more attention.
"We have to address the solution which deals with the problem from the supply side. This could include regular health checks where persons are issued with health certificates. The positive effect would be that where persons are satisfied that they are healthy it would be an even greater incentive to then preserve that healthy status," he said.
Taking a swipe at what he alluded to as a justice system bent on ignoring the situation, Mr. Hamilton said:
"We don't need anymore laws. There are laws on the books which the courts and legislators have set their faces against. It's like a poor relation, you know it's there but you try to continue as if it didn't exist, or that it wasn't there."
