East Legon prostitute: 'Police arrest us for sex'

A sex worker at East Legon in Accra has accused police officers of frustrating and abusing them at their area of operation, causing clients to stay away from the place, and leaving them in a desperate financial crisis.

The lady, who confessed to being a prostitute, but would not give her name, made the disclosure on Accra100.5fm’s morning show, Ghana Yensom, on Wednesday April 20, in a telephone interview after she sent a text message to the radio station concerning the frustrations they are facing in the line of duty at East Legon.

She said police officers in the area often arrest and harass them for money.

She disclosed that some police officers demand sex from prostitutes who are unable to meet such financial demands, which she claimed often happened in the bucket of police pick-up vans or against walls in secluded places. The prostitute also said on many occasions, policemen could take turns to sleep with several prostitutes before letting them off.

This, she said, had affected their businesses as 'Johns' now steer clear of their areas of operation to avoid arrests.

She, thus, called on the police to allow them to operate freely as escorting had become their only livelihood following their loss of employment.

“We are not armed robbers, we are not criminals. We do not kill anyone,” said the lady, who claimed to have worked as a manicurist until a decongestion exercise a few years back, which led to the demolition of her shop, compelled her to switch to whoring.

She said there were numerous security challenges in the area, with the recent murder of Abuakwa North MP J.B. Danquah-Adu being a case in point, which the police needed to pay more attention to.

Asked if any of the sex workers had been able to identify, at least, one police officer, who had requested sex in exchange for their freedoms, she told host Chief Jerry Forson that though she could identify them, she could not recall their names as the officers take off their tags during such operations. She said many of those same policemen, who are killing their business, patronise their services in mufti, once they are off duty, and wondered why they would want to arrest them. Soliciting remains a violation of Ghana's statutes.