19 July,2012 09:45 AM IST | | ANI
The Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board has released the booklet detailing business owners and residents dealings with street prostitutes in their fight to ban them from working near homes, schools and sports grounds.
Donna Lee, the manager of the Hunters Corner and central Papatoetoe business districts, claimed that sex workers, among other things, are damaging public property
"Prostitutes use these (street sign poles) as dancing poles," a news website quoted Lee as saying.
"The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them. Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people," she said.
Lee said that she doesn't receive complaints from business people anymore because they have "given up on getting any help," and simply go about cleaning up their properties which involved picking up condoms, drugs and faeces.
"We quite literally deal with human waste every day," they said.
The booklet starts with a foreword from Mayor Len Brown who calls for legislative support to combat the "uninhibited" spread of street prostitution.
"There is no doubt that the street sex trade is enjoying its unrestricted use of public space and is possibly the only industry in New Zealand to enjoy such status.
"Other industries must comply with licences or special authority of some kind. The street sector of prostitution faces no such constraints," Brown wrote.
Auckland Council Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places Bill is currently before the parliament. It aims to give councils the ability to ban sex workers from working in certain areas.
In the booklet Otara-Papatoetoe board Chairman John McCracken wrote, "we are beyond moral outrage. We just ask for some reasonable control of this industry."
An unnamed accountant recalled an incident in February where a transvestite had rammed a supermarket trolley into a woman's car at 8am, before lying across the bonnet of her car.
A month later a school-bus full of children had observed a transvestite changing her dress.
A shop owner said up to 20-30 prostitutes worked outside his shop on some nights.
He said that they shoplifted from his store, begged his customers for money and defecated behind his shop.
Sharon Maxey had been forced to move her Lace and Craft shop from Manurewa because of problems with prostitutes.
She decided to move after an elderly male had been threatened with a knife by a transvestite outside her shop.
Graham Mullins, Town Manager Otahuhu Mainstreet Association, said that the town's CCTV security cameras had captured "appalling behaviour."
He said like anyone selling goods, prostitutes should also require permits.
