Strip club owners want the government to regulate their industry because they offered a more acceptable facade to a dirty business, the Malta Confederation of Women’s Organisations (MCWO) said this afternoon.
The MCWO in a statement reiterated its repeated stance that strip clubs, prostitution and trafficking were inextricably linked.
Although this might not be immediately visible, sexual activity happened in the back and VIP rooms or in nearby flats or hotels, the MCWO said.
While strip club owners tried to present their business as harmless and clean, such clubs served, in reality, to give a more acceptable facade to a dirty business.
The MCWO said legislation would give owners the blessing to operate with more legitimacy, helping prostitution and sexual abuse become more normalised.
The government, the confederation said, was duty bound to legislate for the common good, not for the benefit of strip club owners.
It called on the government to look at the sex industry holistically, rather than asking owners to set their own rules on what strippers should or should not wear and how clients should behave.
In this process, the so-called ‘massage’ parlours which are also proliferating within urban spaces including villages, should also be taken into consideration, it said.
“We are aware that these massage parlours are becoming a concern to strip club owners, because they are now running into direct competition within their lurky businesses.”
The government should also seriously tackle the issue of sex trafficking where women from China, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine were being trafficked into Malta to serve the expanding sex industry.
The Maltese government did not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, the confederation said, adding that the government's anti-trafficking budget of €20,000 was a joke.