Organized massagers: Get rid of pap smear ordinance

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent .

A GROUP of massagers and spa owners on Thursday asked the city council to review an ordinance that requires masseuses to undergo weekly pap smear tests, vaginal cleaning and Gram staining, calling the city law “anti-women” and “unconstitutional.”

The group brought its petition to the city council’s committee on health, sanitation and health insurance in the hope that councilors would review Section 509(b) of City Ordinance 4373-94.

It was read before the committee by Karen Lourdes Reyes, owner of Spa Traditions who served as the group’s spokesperson.

Reyes said the ordinance is “anti-women, oppressive, unreasonable and violative of the rights to due process and equal protection enshrined under the 1987 Constitution.”

“It is now high time that the city council of Cagayan de Oro revisit and amend this ordinance,” she said.

The ordinance obliges massagers to submit themselves to weekly routine physical examinations by the City Health Office for revalidation of their health certificates.

The ordinance also provides that if found to be suffering from venereal or any communicable diseases, the massagers are to be suspended and their health certificates would be withheld  until they have recuperated.

Reyes said the ordinance is based on the presumption that all massagers are commercial sex workers which is “arbitrary, cruel, degrading to women and devoid of any sound basis.”

“This requirement must be stopped immediately. It targets only women therapists, and subjects them to painful and degrading procedures… So long as a woman is a massage therapist, she is made to undergo invasive tests to determine her cleanliness and worthiness to continue her livelihood,” Reyes said.

The presumption, she said, is “patently biased and extremely prejudicial to the majority of women therapists who engage in the honest livelihood of offering purely aesthetic and wholesome massage services.”

She said masseuses who offer decent services are being made to strip off and open their legs weekly before strangers in the City Health Office.

Reyes said the masseuses were recognized therapists who received training from the Department of Health (DOH) and they passed the committee on examiners for message theraphy.

Sadly, she said, they are profiled as “highisk individuals” which is “unjustifiable.”

“Spas are not part of the entertainment industry. Our therapists are professionals who receive proper remuneration, and are not open to rendering sexual acts out of negotiations or desperation or whatever reason. Not all women open their legs to the idea of easy money,” Reyes said.