“PLEASURE COLONY”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31081, 9 June 1966, Page 13

“PLEASURE COLONY”

Saigon Drive Against Vice

r.V.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, June 7.

Saigon is planning to transfer its prostitutes from the back streets to a suburban “pleasure colony” in a drive to solve the city’s vice* problem, it was announced here today. The Welfare Minister, Tran Ngos Lien, said the Vietnamese girls would be herded into an enclosed area where they could continue to ply their lucrative trade, away from the population and under strict medical control. Other government sources said the colony would have its own bars, markets and cinemas and would be guarded against Viet Cong infiltration.

The girls would not be allowed to leave without permission from the colony’s administrator.

Mr Lien said segregating the girls was the first step in an attempt to eliminate prostitution altogether. The next step would be the setting up of a reform programme to enable the girls, many of them teen-agers, to earn a normal living once they decided to leave the profession.

Prostitution, prohibited by law, has been a serious problem in South Vietnam ever since the Indo-China war, and has been aggravated by the influx of more than 250,000 free-spending American and other Allied troops. Mr Lien said a survey was being made for a site for the colony and work would start as soon as the plan was officially approved. If the plan proves successful, it will be extended to other provincial cities plagued by the problem of prostitution, he added.