Sex workers invade Tamale Police barracks
A battalion of commercial sex workers in the Tamale metropolis in the Northern Region have extended their business activities to the Regional police headquarters barracks.
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A monitoring by Graphic Online has showed that the sex workers, including teenagers, report for work at the police park where the Northern Regional Prisons Service headquarters is also located around 7pm every evening.
They dress in sexually provoking apparels to patrol the roads around the barracks and the Jubilee Park.
The activities of the sex workers have become a talk in town. Apart from the barracks they operate in other areas including the Bank of Ghana road, Victory Cinema area around Aboabo, Nyohini, Tohajie, and the enclave near Alhassan Hotel.
Many of them are believed to be from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cote d'ivoire, and Togo.
Young girls
Last year, NORSAC, a Tamale-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) rescued some three young Nigerian girls who had been brought to Tamale for prostitution by an agent known for recruiting Nigerian girls for such activities in Tamale.
Some of the young girls engaged in the business especially at Tohajie on the road to the Northern Regional Coordinating Council are believed to be between 10 and 12 years.
When Graphic Online interacted with some of them to find out why they were plying their trade close to the police barracks, they said some clients sometimes assault them physically and felt being close to the police was a safe haven for them as a way of putting fear in their clients.
Others also said some of their customers, including security personnel preferred picking them up near the police barracks.
Worrying
In an interview with Graphic Online, the Northern Regional Coordinator of Plan International, an international NGO, Mr Stephen Konde, expressed worry that despite the closeness of the sex workers to the police barracks, the police were yet to take action.
According to him, it was an indictment on the police and prison officers around the area who have allowed the business to thrive at their backyard.
Mr Konde has, therefore, urged parents, religious leaders and the police to act quickly to arrest the situation in the Tamale metropolis.
He expressed concern that some elderly persons also were in the habit of renting their rooms to the young girls to be used as brothels.