CO129-472 - Others - 1921 — Page 377

TRONG ỐNG

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SEAFARING POPULATION (continued).

(4)

The provision of adequate facilities for recreation at all large ports under the administration of a Joint organisation representative of owners and seafarers.

They desire in addition to call the special attention of the International Labour Organisation to the importance of No. 4 about facilities for re- creation.

The British Ministry of Health and the Marine Department of the Board of Trade are taking steps to carry into effect Resolutions 1, 2 and 3. We recommend therefore that special attention should be given to the requirements of the seafaring population. We would suggest that the facilities for treatment for seafarers should be continuously open and very accessible to the shipping quarter of the town: that arrangementa should be made for the first official visiting any incoming ship to take with him printed particulare as to the local facilities for treatment available, and require them to be affixed in a suitable position so that the information may be conveyed to the crew before landing. (a)

We recommend also that special information should be sent at the same time warning incoming seamen as to the high rate of incidence of Venereal Diseases pre- vailing in the town, and informing them that no system of doctor's certificates or registration provides any guarantee of freedom from disease.

We recommend that information as to the decent lodging accommodation and recreational facilities should be conveyed at the same time.

We consider it is important that information on these three points should reach the officers and men of sach incoming ship before there is an opportunity for them to debark as the commercial interest which now exista in prostitution leads to the promotors of this system adopting a very efficient system of advertisement.

THE SUPPRESSION OF PROSTITUTION.

We were informed that the Colony was adminsitered by English Common Law, under which brothel keeping is an offence. This is strengthened by a local ordinance allowing the Authorities to close any brothel and deport the inmates. The Vagrancy Act is strengthened to deal with soliciting by a local ordinance penalising solicit- ing from doorways, windows or balconies.

A local ordinance (Public Health) exists forbidding the use of sleeping cubicles on the ground floors.

(a)

Such a clinio could usefully be installed in the vicinity of the mercantile Banding piere or of the various seamen's Institutions, and would be under the direct supervision of the Civil Medical Department; out-patient treatment only being given, in-patienta being dealt with at the Civil Hospital.