Sri Lanka’s chicks, nuts and sex workers

Dec 29, 2010 (LBO) - Serious shortages of essential food forced Sri Lanka's government to import chicken, onions and coconuts, but a survey by health authorities has shown that the country is also desperately short of sex workers.

Doctor Sujatha Samarakoon of the AIDS prevention unit of the health ministry has said that there are 200,000 people who go to prostitutes, but there were only 40,000 sex workers in the country.

The Daily Mirror newspaper, which reported the latest shortage, did not say what the ideal punter-to-prostitute ratio should be for an emerging middle-income country, but the implication is that there could be queues outside brothels too.

"She said that these figures are something that has to be seriously taken into account considering the fact that Sri Lanka is a small country," the Daily Mirror quoted Samarakoon as saying.

She noted that HIV/AIDS spread was minimal in Asia's new wonder.

(full story at http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/8594-200000-prostitutes-in-the-country.html).

Samarakoon's survey probably explains why there is an influx of Chinese and East European sex workers trying to fill the supply gap.

They also help raise national pride.

According to those familiar