Sex workers get vocational training

Sex workers in the Central African Republic completed on Saturday a five-day training session on starting and managing alternative revenue-generating activities, in an effort to help curb HIV/AIDS infection. A local NGO, the Centre for Documentation, Information and Training, conducted the training in Bangui, the capital, for 50 sex workers from across the country. The official in charge of training, Bruno Ndreyo, said the participants had been taught how to select business, where to locate them and how to fix prices. "I used to fix my prices without taking into account fees for shipment, police and customs," Barbara Zoumbe-Kokot, a 27-year-old mother of one, told IRIN. She is a member of an association of 230 former sex workers in Berberati, 186 km west of Bangui. She now runs a cloths shop that she opened in 2000 with 200,000 francs (US $416), and a 50,000-franc contribution two years later from the UNDP. Her capital is now 450,000 francs ($750). The UN Development Progamme and the government's National Committee Against AIDS funded the training programme. An official of the UNDP anti-HIV/AIDS programme, Gustave Niakamatchi, told IRIN on 24 August that another 100 sex workers in Bangui and 100 in Bouar (454 km north west of Bangui) had received 50,000 francs each in March 2002 to start income-generating activities. In June, former sex workers formed an anti-AIDS group known as the Association des Filles Libres de Centrafrique contre le Sida. The association, with 400 members in Bangui, has chapters in major towns. A December 2002 study by the Pasteur Institute - a French medical research body - said that 14.8 percent of the population was HIV-positive.