Red Light District tourists should pay 5 euros to visit area: politician

Metje Blaak, former sex worker and a candidate for 50Plus in the Amsterdam municipal elections, wants to charge an entry fee of five euros for the Red Light District. According to her, this is an effective way to reduce crowds in the area and to make sure that sex workers aren't driven away, the Telegraaf reports.

Blaak and her friend Xaviera Hollander, also a former sex worker, point out that the prostitution area in the city shrank in recent years and that the number of window brothels decreased by more than a hundred. The increasing crowds in the area also mean that a large part of the anonymity of Johns are disappearing. According to them, it is already no exception that a sex worker's customer comes out to be greeted with loud applause from a terrace full of people.

All this makes life as a sex worker in Amsterdam more and more difficult, Blaak and Hollander said to the newspaper. "You already see that women go underground and work at home", they said.

Blaak feels that charging an entry fee for the Red Light District will offer a solution. "Ask everyone five euros to enter the Red Light District", she said to the Telegraaf. "I think people will pay that. Only when you have visited one of the sex workers will you receive that deposit at the exit. I think it will be pleasantly busy in the neighborhood again."