Prostitution collapses during World Cup

Prostitution collapses during World Cup
Hamburg | June 25, 2006 10:15:06 AM IST

In Hamburg's red light district, one of Germany's top tourist attractions, prostitutes say the World Cup has led to a drastic drop in business, according to a newspaper report.

Before the tournament, there had been predictions that as many as 40,000 prostitutes would immigrate to Germany to provide sexual services for hundreds of thousands of football fans. But after two weeks, pimps said the event had been a bust, not a boom.

The Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper Saturday quoted a brothel operator, Andreas Harms, 34, as saying: "We expected the rush of tourists would improve turnover, but business is completely dead."

He said only one fifth of the bordello rooms were in use. One of the prostitutes, Alicia, 22, from Poland, said: "If you've got one customer a day, you're doing well. Previously it used to be six a day."

Four kilometres away, at Reeperbahn - the street that is the historic centre of the Hamburg business - sex club operator Xhavit Dreshaj, 38, said: "There are more people in the city, but it has not helped business."

Before the World Cup, city welfare authorities boosted staff to help hundreds of women trafficked into the city to provide sexual services and increased supplies of free contraceptives.

"The panic was unfounded," said Emilija Mitrovic, the sex workers organiser at the trade union Verdi. Said Veronica Munk of Amnesty for Women, a pro-prostitution group: "We haven't seen any increase whatever."

Hamburg is one of the cities where World Cup games are being played and it also has a huge football public viewing area next to the Reeperbahn.

--DPA

(IANS)

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