CEBU City Hall is cracking down on so-called “carton girls” who engage in prostitution in the city’s red light districts.
A routine patrol by police together with the city’s Anti-Mendicancy Task Force in Barangay Carreta last Wednesday evening resulted in a roundup of at least six women, all of legal age, who admitted to engaging in prostitution in exchange for money.
Two of the women were rounded up near the Amihan motel along S. Osmeña Road while the four others were rounded up at the vicinity of a nearby commercial establishment.
Police said the women would bring their costumers to a nearby alley where makeshift rooms made from cardboards and styrofoam and covered with “trapal” have been set up for their use.
The task force headed by Raquel Arce then brought the girls to the City Social Welfare and Development Office where they were warned not to engage in prostitution, made to sign a commitment that they would already cease from their sex trade and then released afterward.
In a meeting held yesterday morning at City Hall after the end of the routine patrol, Arce called on the police to assist the task force in going after “carton girls” and their pimps.
She said the mayor’s office had received reports of indigent parents offering their children for sex in exchange for money to passersby, including foreigners in Barangay Carreta.
Arce said the children can be rescued and brought to the City Social Welfare Office for custody while parents can face trafficking charges.