Prostitutes opt for resettlement

BOGOR (JP): Two of three prostitutes who have been regularly netted in raids against sex workers here agreed on Thursday to join the government-sponsored transmigration program, an official said.

The other finally opted to seek a business loan from the state emergency fund known as the social safety net program, head of the Bogor office of social and political affairs, E. Rukanda, said.

According to Rukanda, the three were among the 33 sex workers, including five transvestites, netted by a joint operations team of local related officials and students of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture in the early hours of Thursday.

They were apprehended soliciting business along the major streets of Jl. Juanda, Jl. Kapten Muslihat and Jl. Pajajaran here by team members posing as their customers.

The remaining 30 prostitutes were sent directly to a local social rehabilitation center in which they were sternly warned to stop trading their bodies and to switch to other professions.

"We reminded them that anyone arrested again in the near future would be sent to another rehabilitation center out of town," Rukanda said.

Unlike the other prostitutes, three of the sex workers had been arrested many times and given sewing training at a rehabilitation center at Palimanan, Cirebon, about 260 kilometers from Bogor.

"This time they argued that they had to sell their bodies for economic reasons. They said they had wanted to start tailoring businesses but had no capital," Rukanda said.

He however did not explain where the two women would be placed in the transmigration scheme or the kind of jobs offered to them in their new places of residence.

The program usually targets the vast virgin forests of Kalimantan and Sumatra as the new settlement locales for transmigrants. (24/ivy)