FALMOUTH, Trelawny - A senior health official's recommendation to decriminalise prostitution and tax sex workers has earned the ire of Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller, who said the country should focus instead on employment and education.

"I challenge the Government, don't even think about it. Because we need more teachers, not prostitutes; more policemen and women, not more prostitutes," Simpson Miller told a People's National Party divisional meeting in Falmouth Friday evening.

"We need more women with skills that they can be marketable, not more prostitutes," she added. "We need education and training, not more prostitutes. I will not live in a country and allow anybody to promote prostitution, to promote sex trade rather than offering employment."

Last week, the Observer reported Dr Kevin Harvey, senior medical officer in charge of the health ministry's national HIV/STI Programme, as suggesting the Government could rake in over $3 billion in revenue annually by decriminalising sex workers and taxing them.

Regulating sex workers, Dr Harvey said, would mean that the country would no longer have to look to external funding agencies to finance the HIV/STI Programme.
On Friday, Simpson Miller called on the Government to establish a skills training programme "for all those who are now engaged in prostitution" to prepare them for an alternative source of employment.

"Take them out of prostitution so they can maintain their dignities as women, that they can protect that body of theirs that was given to them, made sacred by God Almighty, not to be abused but nurtured and loved and cared for," she said.
She also called on the churches to join forces with the Government in offering assistance to prostitutes "so that mothers will not be ashamed and have to hide from our children what they are doing to make a living".

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