Torn Apart: BOYD PHIRI
IF Kabwe were a war zone, certainly it would be declared a no-fly area.

But thank God that the once ghost town is not at war with anybody, except that the Mayor of the municipality is trying to declare sex workers redundant.
Quote me correctly, the civic leader is not their employer. I guess if he was, the call girls would be thinking of dragging him to the labour office already.
Who says the old profession has no problems of its own? Of course, feelings of regret are not strange to sex work in the hood, some call girls often mention the consequences of its illegality like police harassment, the risk of being killed by some clients as topmost among their regrets.
I am not sure if prostitutes would add the declaration that Kabwe is a no-go area for them as one of the regrets for doing sex work.
It must be said that there is nothing easy about being a sex worker in the hood, especially when a Mayor draws up plans to ground the operations of call girls in Kabwe few weeks after the National AIDS Council announced that it had distributed 382,500 male condoms and 1,000 pieces of female condoms in Central Province ahead of the festive season.
If the first reaction to the decision by the Mayor of Kabwe to declare the town a no-go area for prostitutes was to relocate to nearby towns like Kapiri Mposhi and Ndola, they should not get out yet. They don’t want the Kabwe to become a ghost town again, do they?
Well, I am not saying that every traveller who wants to keep his virility in check away from home should pass through the Mayor of Kabwe for permission to have a roll in the hay with an ‘outlawed’ sex worker.
The thing is, the whole exercise to stop call girls from operating in the town seems to be a difficult one.
It’s not as easy as collecting grain levies from farmers and the disposal of diseased carcasses.
I have no opposition to the Mayor’s decision to declare Kabwe a no-go area for prostitutes, but a few friends I’ve spoken to were horrified by the decision, especially that the civic leader did not explain how he is going to identify all sex workers for deportation.
I am sure the prostitutes are also wondering how they will be gotten rid of from their obscure sex dens, where even their clients need a guide to locate them.
Of course, they don’t need a work permit to operate in Kabwe, but one thing is sure, the Mayor wants to spend more time on issues of street lighting and road upgrades in the town than deal with the issue of used condoms thrown all over the streets at night by sex workers.
Obviously, no Mayor wants to see his council spend more resources on collecting used condoms as a result of illicit sex on the streets.
Besides, the transfer of some authority and marching resources by central government to councils is not meant for collection of used condoms from the streets alone.
Already, the Mayor has more issues to grapple with, like illegal land allocation, some of which land is used to build watering holes where prostitution flourishes.
Perhaps, the Mayor is not happy that sex workers in Kabwe are merely selling physical and emotional labour than taking part in the ‘Keep Kabwe Clean’ campaign.
It’s true that sex workers and their clients could end up regretting doing the paid-sex thing in Kabwe, but one has to question whether the Mayor’s no-go area decree for prostitutes is feasible, especially that sex workers do not have the mark ‘P’ for prostitute on their foreheads.
But on the other hand, the Kabwe Mayor should be commended for showing concern on men who have spent an embarrassing amount of money on prostitutes’ upkeep in bars and various other sexual encounters.
It’s not easy to ‘bless’ a sex worker in a ghost town, which is why the Mayor feels the town should be a no-go area for prostitutes.
bjboydphiri@yahoo.com