Burden of risk

Change low graphic options | Change language | Skip content to navigation

Page context: Agenda magazine > Agenda Magazine 2007 > Burden of risk

Despite high levels of HIV/AIDS awareness, unsafe habits have proved hard to break in the ports of Ghana

Most employees of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority in Tema and Takoradi live in quarters provided by the company. The concentration of these workers in the port and harbour areas, combined with the regular transit market of seafarers and truck drivers, and general poverty among the wider population, have encouraged the development of various informal activities here as people try to cope with financial inadequacies.

Food selling is one of the main informal activities around the port areas, the others being tailoring and fashion design, hawking and other small scale trades. Some of the formal sector workers, particularly women, also operate food selling businesses and other income generating activities to augment their income.

TAKING UP THE CHALLENGE

By Owusu Afriyie, general secretary of the Maritime and Dockworkers’ Union of Ghana.

We have just finished a six-month HIV/AIDS programme successfully and we are about to start the second phase of it. The first phase’s focus was awareness raising and sensitisation. We organised six seminars and in total 250 seafarers and dock workers attended them.

Ghana AIDS Commission provided the funds for this phase, and has now approved the second phase of the project, which will focus on education. Distributing condoms is also part of our ongoing programme.

In general the HIV prevalence rate in Ghana is below the general level of sub-Saharan Africa. I think this is because the AIDS Commission in Ghana started its activities earlier than many other countries. Faith based organisations, NGOs and trade unions are also taking part in this fight. So, the general awareness level is quite high.

However, our ports are part of the Abijan-Lagos transport corridor, which heightens the risk. In addition we are experiencing an unprecedented increase in traffic, due to the political situation in Cote d’Ivoire, which means that nowadays many ships – and as a result many truckers from land locked countries – are diverted to our ports. This increases the risk of new infections substantially.

By getting involved in HIV/AIDS education and informing our members, however, we can make a difference.

A report commissioned by the Ghanaian development agency GSMF International in 2004 showed that some customers and food sellers were taking advantage of their interaction to negotiate commercial sex transactions. Some of the food sellers’ employees have no homes, and thus sleep in the open areas around the port and harbour after work, in close proximity to freight forwarders and truck drivers who often sleep in or under their trucks.

At the same time, sex workers patronise some of the clubs and hotels that workers often visit for leisure, particularly those located around the port areas and port employees’ quarters.

The main clients for commercial sex in the ports include sailors, truck drivers, freight forwarders, dockworkers and other junior port employees, often in the younger age groups. Most of the young unmarried male participants surveyed for the report, HIV/AIDS and the workplace, spoke of having multiple sex partners and not using any protection.

Port and harbour communities are generally aware of HIV/AIDS, its transmission, prevention and possible consequences, but at the time the study was carried out, only a small group, especially among the young adults, had adopted preventive behaviours.

Many community members showed a positive attitude towards programmes to curb transmission rates, and there was clearly potential for these to help bring about change. However, having multiple sex partners and unprotected sex were still common practices, indicating that people had not internalised or taken the consequences of HIV/AIDS seriously, or that their circumstances had encouraged indifference to them.

This is an edited extract of the GSMF report, HIV/AIDS and the workplace: a qualitative assessment of the Ghana Port and Harbour Communities for an HIV/AIDS workplace programme, by Francis Okello and Juliet Ighure.

Section home:
Agenda magazine

Other pages for Agenda magazine:
Agenda magazine 2009 | Agenda Magazine 2008 | Order or Download Agenda | Editorial staff

Transport International Magazine

Full graphics version

accessibility | site help | site map

ITF House, 49-60 Borough Road, London SE1 1DR | +44 20 7403 2733 | mail@itf.org.uk