These short-term contracts, de facto prostitution agreements, legalize both domestic and overseas business trips by the girls and their clients, said Le Duc Hien, Vice Head of the Department of Social Evil Prevention under the MoLISA.
Many female attendants have been also lured to border areas between Vietnam and China, as well as Cambodia, to meet the increasing demand for prostitution there, Hien said at a press briefing in Hanoi on March 1.
Given this, the Vietnamese government has allocated VND25 billion for 41 provinces to fight this social evil in 2012. The money is part of a VND600 billion package for the anti-prostitution program between 2011 and 2015.
In the struggle against prostitution, emphasis will be put on education and public awareness to change behaviours and lifestyles in each individual and family, with the aim of building a strong consensus in society, said Nguyen Van Minh, head of the Department for Social Evil Prevention.
According to statistics by the department, over 73,000 establishments provide ‘sensitive’ services involving more than 48,000 female employees nationwide. Of the total, nearly 3,000 establishments with over 3,200 female staff are suspected of providing prostitution services. Prostitution has reached many rural, remote, or mountainous areas.
Many prostitution rings run sophisticated operations, taking advantage of high-tech utilities such as internet, websites, and forums. There are hundreds of online sites introducing prostitutes. A number of models, singers, actresses, and students have been found to be involved in prostitution.
Regarding drug abuse, Minh said that in 2012, Vietnam will shift its focus from building large-scale, provincial level detoxification centres for drug addicts to developing a system of community-based average-scale centres to increase addicts’ access to treatment services.
Organizations, businesses, and individuals will be mobilized in efforts to provide jobs for reformed drug users, Minh added. The country will also strive to increase the rate of addicts voluntarily engaging in drug detoxification.
Some specific targets for 2012 include receiving 35,000 drug addicts for detoxification, managing 20,000 people who have undergone detoxification, providing jobs for them, and slashing by 30 percent the number of communes and wards heavily affected by prostitution.
