Push for sex workers’ safety

Government is moving with a sense of urgency to address the safety of sex workers, and its intervention could possibly see the trade being decriminalised.

Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey hinted at this yesterday following a special ceremony held at the Barbados Museum, Garrison, St Michael, to mark the ten-year anniversary of Jabez House, a non-governmental organisation that has been helping to get sex workers off the streets and into alternative employment.

Humphrey, who also has responsibility for gender affairs, said Barbados was lagging behind other countries which took a bold step to legally recognise that sex work was an active means of living, and put measures in place to ensure workers in the trade were safe.

He was speaking in the wake of a shooting death last Friday night involving a sex worker along Bush Hill, St Michael.

Caroline Baird, 44, was killed around 11:15 p.m. in an area at the rear of the Grand Stand of the Garrison Savannah. The Guyanese mother of four was shot during a struggle with a number of people in a vehicle and died on the spot. (SB)

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