E200/MONTH FOR GIRLS TO AVOID SEX

MBABANE – Government plans to give adolescent girls monthly cash incentives to keep them safe from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and sugar daddies.

Girls in the age group of 18 to 24 will be paid at least E200 per month, for the next five years. The World Bank pilot project under the DPM’s office has 9 000 girls already from four constituencies who have been identified as first beneficiaries of the project.

The girls would use the money to pay for their immediate needs, such as toiletries, sanitary pads, cologne and general things they desire.
Khanya Mabuza, the Director of National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA) said his organisation came up with the initiative after having worked with other partners to develop an HIV/Aids Investment case, aimed at ending AIDS in Swaziland. 

He said the case came up with a plan to give adolescent girls monthly cash incentives to keep them safe from HIV.
Mabuza said the cash for the girls strategy was one highly innovative HIV prevention approach aimed at protecting the girls from contracting the virus.

The social protection programmes such as the cash grants approach aims at building the girls’ self esteem and mitigates structural risk factors that exacerbate their vulnerability to sugar daddies.
The director said the  cash transfer aimed at fending off prying sugar daddies that give girls money, to entice them into sexual encounters that result into their infection with HIV.
Mabuza said a budget of US Dollars (US$) 306.6 million (E3.3 billion) would be needed.

The director said cash for the girls strategy, was one highly innovative HIV prevention approach, to protect the young girls and young women from HIV.
He said the programme was one of the country’s new five ‘game changer’ strategies in the fight against the HIV scourge.

“Therefore, the cash incentive approach is aimed at building their self esteem and mitigates structural risk factors that exacerbate their vulnerability to sugar daddies,” he said.
“The programmes were all aimed at enabling the country to make savings in both lives and money in the long run.”
He identified these programmes as the scaling up of voluntary medical male circumcision, elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, intensification of TB/HIV co-infection diagnosis and treatment, as well as the accelerated scale up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV.

Some of these strategies have already been rolled out and include the hyped male circumcision programme, targeting males aged between 10 and 30.
Through the programme, 2 500 boys from various primary schools were circumcised by organisations such as the Population Service International (PSI) and the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) during the recent school holidays.
Meanwhile, Mabuza said girls, in the earlier mentioned age group, were selected for the project because studies found that they contributed 25 per cent to the national HIV incidence rate of 2.4 per cent that was established in the Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey (SHIMS) of 2012. “A number of other studies have revealed that in Swaziland young women between ages 18-24 were the most at risk to acquiring HIV as their sexual encounters were particularly risky,” said Mabuza.
He said the money was meant to empower the girls, build their self esteem and mitigate structural risk factors that exacerbate their vulnerability.

The director said studies had shown that they got infected from encounters with older men, who usually take advantage of their vulnerability.
“The sugar daddies give them money and buy them a lot of necessities which were usually not too costly. Therefore, giving them money would empower them to stop them from taking or accepting money from the uncouth men,” he said.
Mabuza said NERCHA and other stakeholders involved in the fight against the HIV scourge hoped that this initiative, together with the other four programmes, would reduce new infections by significant numbers.
Under the ongoing mass medical male circumcision (MC) project, for example, he said 80 per cent of Swazi males, between the ages of 10 and 30 were being targeted for the procedure in the next five years.
With this programme, Mabuza said Swaziland would avert at least 30 per cent of new HIV infections between 2014 and 2030.

These savings would also translate to an estimated US$50 million (E549 million) in future medical costs of new infections and reduce long term demand of MC.
Mabuza said the combined effect of the implementation of all five programmes would also lead to a 60 per cent reduction in new infections and 30 per cent reduction of AIDS deaths.
The successful implementation of the programmes would also result to the prevention of 200 000 children from being orphaned. “It would also result to long term savings amounting to one third of the projected fiscal burden of HIV without the upscale,” he said.

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