Dar es Salaam, Tanzania β An upsurge of Burundian and Congolese refugees has ignited a wave of women seeking fortunes in the sex industry in Tanzania. Hundreds of women from rural and urban Tanzania are streaming to refugee camps, located in the western Kigoma province, to engage in commercial sex. The province, sharing the border with neighbouring Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hosts more than 70, refugees who have escaped civil wars in the two states. Women craving for wealth are driven by the good salaries paid to workers of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other international and local NGOs working in the camps, a recent study by the UN Development Programme says.
The sex trade has attracted women of all social classes, ranging from bar maids, housewives to office workers who turn into hookers at night to supplement their meagre incomes.
The women's rush for money has alarmed Tanzanian health officials who fear that the movement would propel the fast spread of the AIDS scourge. Like other 24 provinces of the country, Kigoma has also been ravaged by the incurable disease since the first case was reported in the country in It shows that during the day, fishing, mining and commercial centres conduct normal trading activities "but become hot spots for commercial sex at night.
The booming sex industry in Tanzania has its roots on grinding poverty and the unemployment crisis facing youths.
Thousands of the poverty-stricken and desperate youths, unable to obtain jobs in the shrinking labour market, dodge economic hardships in the remote rural villages and flock to urban centres hoping to lead better lives.
