Prostitutes opt for resettlement

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)