TA to stop clutter from prostitutes’ business cards

The Tel Aviv Municipality’s enforcement branch will team up with the Task Force on Human Trafficking, to clean up the business cards for sex workers scattered across the city, the municipality stated on Tuesday.

Ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday, the municipality said city enforcement workers will take part in lectures on the trafficking of women and the sex trade in the city, “in order to gain a deep understanding of the problems and importance of this phenomenon.”

The city said that while it does not have the tools the police has to fight the sex trade, its municipal workers have the authority to fine those distributing the cards, though they admit they cannot take action against the printing presses that make the business cards – which can be found in the hundreds on the streets of Tel Aviv, especially in the city’s northern and north central neighborhoods.

“The city has in the past and will continue to call on the police to take investigative action against those who send people to distribute the cards on the streets of the city, and prosecute them according to Israeli law,” said the municipality.

A bicyclist scattering massage parlor cards on Yirmiyahu Street in north Tel Aviv last week told The Jerusalem Post that sex workers give him bags of over 1,000 cards to toss out on the streets of the city, for around NIS 100 per package.

The bicyclist said that for the most part, the people who pay him want the cards to be spread around north Tel Aviv, especially near the port and the hotel strip where tourists congregate.

He added that demand increases in the summertime, and he can usually get paid at least NIS 200 per batch distributed.

In the past, women’s rights groups have protested against the business cards and the free sex trade magazines given out at Tel Aviv kiosks, at times dumping them in piles outside the city hall.