Prostitution on the rise in Pretoria

Sex work in the capital city was on the rise, specifically in the townships, said Mayor Kgosientso Ramakgopa.

Pretoria - Sex work in the capital city was on the rise, specifically in the townships, said Mayor Kgosientso Ramakgopa.

He said on Thursday there was a rise in prostitution in areas such as Soshanguve. “It used to be at Sunnyside, Hatfield and Arcadia, but now you find sex workers in the townships as well,” he said. Those practising sex work were getting younger and from across all race spectrums, he added.

Together with Reverend Gift Moerane and Gauteng MEC for Health Qedani Mahlangu, Ramokgopa was hosting a media briefing about the sexual behaviour of university, as well as higher education, students.

The higher education and training HIV/Aids programme conducted a research on the matter and found that women aged between 20 to 29 were largely exposed to sexually transmitted infections, which they got from older men.

“Older men with money are able to lure them and divert them from their obligations towards studies,” Mahlangu said.

She said they were making a vow to “work tirelessly” to support students in tertiary institutions so they did not fall into the trap of looking to older men for financial relief.

Mahlangu also said the survey found that young people continued engaging in risky sexual behaviour, even with the knowledge that they were HIV-positive, or at risk of contracting the virus.

“It seems that for these youngsters, the risk of falling pregnant is scarier to them than HIV,” Mahlangu said.

She said to target some of these issues, they were ramping up efforts to have a million people in the province tested for HIV.

Mahlangu said that government was doing all it could to reach the target of having 90 percent of people know their status by 2030.

The goal was also to have 90 percent of those who were HIV-positive on treatment, and a similar percentage of those on treatment virally suppressed, she said.

nomaswazi.nkosi@inl.co.za

Pretoria News