Unsafe sex prevalent

A recent study of 108 sex workers from the mainland carried out by Zi Teng showed 35 per cent of them arrived in Hong Kong as tourists and the remaining 65 per cent had one-way permits for visiting family and business trips.

The survey was carried out between January and September this year. Almost half of the sex workers said they were peasants on the mainland, 18 per cent were workers, 12 per cent were housewives, another 12 per cent were doing small businesses in the homeland and the remaining nine per cent were jobless.

Perhaps the most alarming result, however, was that 52 per cent of them did not insist that their clients use a condom.

Forty-three per cent said they did not use condoms because of fears that they would be used by police as evidence to make an arrest and 37 per cent said they did not want to upset their clients by asking them to use condoms.