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Herald Reporter
A local HIV and Aids information dissemination non-governmental organisation is equipping sex workers with self defence sprays to protect them from physical abuse by clients.

Presenting the packages comprising sprays, among other HIV prevention methods to 25 women who successfully completed an HIV prevention training programme in Mhondoro Ngezi recently, Southern Africa HIV and Aids Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) executive director Ms Lois Chingandu said her organisation noted with concern the increasing cases of violence against commercial sex workers, sometimes resulting in deaths.

“In extreme cases, some of these women are killed by their clients. As SAfAIDS, we want to end all these sad stories,” said Ms Chingandu. She said the spray was meant to disturb the vision of the attacker enabling the women to run away from the scene.

Ms Chingadu said although they were not promoting commercial sex work, it was better to save a life than treat the women as criminals.

“This spray only costs $13 and we realised that parting with $13 is better than losing a life,” she said.

Through various testimonies and plays staged during the event, which ran concurrently with SAfAIDS’s 20th anniversary, sex workers testified that there was a lot of physical abuse in sex work. One of the sex workers who spoke on condition of anonymity said often she argued with her clients over payment and use of protection.

“Some clients do not want to pay after getting a service. This is despite the fact that you would have agreed on the payment before engaging in sex,” she said.

She said these arguments often led to physical harassment and sometimes deaths. Earlier, Health and Child Care Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa had told the same gathering that his ministry saw commercial sex workers as a programme and not as criminals.

Dr Parirenyatwa said sex workers, prisoners, long distance truck drivers and men who had sex with men were some of the most vulnerable groups targeted for HIV prevention programmes.