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SCMP Reporter

AT least 2,000 Hongkong housewives are working as prostitutes to pay their household bills or husbands' gambling debts, and police say the problem is likely to get worse as 1997 approaches.

  About 10 per cent of the territory's estimated 20,000 prostitutes were believed to be housewives or abandoned wives, according to police sources.

  They worked the streets, massage parlours or secret ''offices'' from late afternoon because it paid more than factory work and relatives could look after children at night.

  Some took only one or two clients at $50 to $250 a time while others worked until 4 am then returned home to put breakfast on the table and see their children off to school.

  Some rented flats or offices in busy nightclub districts and operated alone without their families knowing.

  Others worked in massage parlours to avoid being seen by family and friends.

  However, police sources said some married women worked with their husbands' knowledge and most had decided to become prostitutes ''purely for economic reasons''.

  They were often introduced to it by friends they had met socially or at mahjong who had faced similar money problems.

  Many had husbands who did not have regular employment and clocked up incurred gambling debts.

  The source said the problem was ''peculiar to Hongkong'' because Chinese culture condoned social gambling as a stress outlet, even though the debt eventually led to more stress.

  ''The desperate feeling of 1997 approaching is likely to boost gambling as a stress outlet, so the pressures on women are likely to increase,'' he said.

  Academic research and prostitutes interviewed have supported the claims.

  Hongkong University sociology lecturer Dr Benjamin Leung Kai-ping said 10 interviews with prostitutes for a new book to be released next year had shown lack of economic and social welfare support forced housewives into prostitution.

  The interviews for Women in Hongkong were conducted by co-editor and social work lecturer Dr Veronica Pearson, and showed housewives viewed it as a viable night job.

  Dr Leung said: ''Many could not work during the day, many had not been given the chance to get educational qualifications while they were younger, and some were deserted wives.

  ''Most are housewives with families and kids, who receive little cash assistance from the Government.''   The interviews had not shown any triad connections. The women said they had entered prostitution by choice ''to contribute to the family's keep, apparently without the husband's knowledge''.

  ''They give their husbands excuses for going out like playing mahjong,'' Dr Leung said.

  One of the prostitutes told the South China Morning Post that the women were either supporting their husbands' gambling debts or their own.

  ''I had to do it because my husband had so many debts to pay,'' she said.

  ''But I know one woman who is a full-time housewife. She plays mahjong all morning but her husband doesn't know she comes to a flat here in the afternoon to take two or three customers in the afternoon. The money pays for her gambling.''   Shamshuipo District Board member Mr Mervyn Cheung Man-ping, called for a formal survey to give a more accurate understanding of whether housewives chose to become prostitutes or were forced to because of economics.

  The Association for the Advancement of Feminism and the Hongkong Council of Social Services also called for more social welfare and community support facilities, and job-creation programmes.

  Executive secretary of the association Ms Tsang Gar-yin said women were ''trapped in their caring role by lack of child care services''.



2,000 housewives in sex industry