A shutdown to contain the coronavirus has killed Thailand’s party scene and forced sex workers like Pim out of bars and onto desolate streets. She’s scared but desperately needs customers to pay her rent. Red-light districts from Bangkok to Pattaya have gone quiet with night clubs and massage parlours closed and tourists blocked from entering the country. That has left an estimated 300,000 sex workers out of a job, pressing some onto the streets where the risks are sharpened by the pandemic.

“I’m afraid of the virus but I need to find customers so I can pay for my room and food,” Pim, a 32-year-old transgender sex worker, said in an area of Bangkok where previously bawdy neon-lit bars and brothels have gone dark. Pim is paying a heavy price for the movement restrictions – she has not had a customer for 10 days and the bills are stacking up. Her friend Alice, another transgender sex worker, has also been forced to move from a gogo bar to the roadside.

There are concerns that a Thai government emergency scheme to give 5,000 baht (US$150) to millions of newly jobless over the next three months will exclude sex workers because they cannot prove formal employment. The Empower Foundation, an advocacy group for the kingdom’s sex workers, says entertainment venues make around US$6.4 billion a year, many of them selling sex in some form. Read more via SCMP/AFP