Staff Reporter|Poverty in Zimbabwe has resulted in the increase of child sex workers, who are operating mostly in Harare’s Epworth and Hopely’s poor high density residential areas.
This came out during a meeting sex workers had with the city of Harare health department and local government officials which was organised by Katswe Sisterhood in Harare recently.
“You find out that our clients are running for these young girls because they are very attractive and this is affecting us in a great deal, so we are appealing to the authorities so that they  bring back laws which prohibit children under the age of 18 years from getting into beer halls ,”Alice Chatyoka also known as Malaika told the meeting . She and other grown up commercial sex workers felt threatened by the competition the younger girls brought, albeit even though illegal.
Katswe Sisterhood director ,Talent Jumo, said they were witnessing  with concern the increase of child sex workers mostly in poor communities they are operating in.
“Our concern is that they are children, they are supposed to be in school and according to the constitution they are supposed to be supported and protected by the state and this is not happening. We ought to have safety nets for these children, the social services department should be supporting these children,” said Jumo.
“There is a lot of exploitation in the streets and you find that their clients know that these young girls have much lesser power of negotiating for safe sex and we have encountered lots of such cases where they are abused,”she said.
Jumo added, “There is also an increase in HIV infections in these young girls because of their inability to negotiate for condom use, and they do not even know about emergency contraception and they end up even falling pregnant”.
She said they had developed separate health and sexual right programmes for child sex workers where they  teach them survival skills.