Submitted by Mary Rundell-Holmes on Thu, 01/26/2012 - 18:22
In a further attempt to address its crippling city debt, Bonn, Germany, has installed curbside pay stations for prostitutes working the streets. According the the Huffington Post, the new program requires sex workers to purchase a ticket costing $8.65 for the "privilege" of soliciting customers on the street between 8:15 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. City officials were pleased to find that revenue from the meters totaled nearly $20,000 in the final five months of 2011.
However, it is not clear how long it will take the city to recoup the costs of the program. City government paid for the installation of the Siemens-built meters and for the construction of special wooden garages near them to provide prostitutes with a place to park their cars and have sex. The city is also paying the salaries of security guards stationed near the meters to protect the sex workers using them.
Germany made prostitution a legal business in 2002, so sex workers have paid income tax for several years. With a national debt of nearly two trillion euros (more than two and a half trillion dollars), its government officials are collecting as much revenue as possible.