Local officials say street signs in an Auckland, New Zealand, suburb are facing a dangerous scourge: prostitutes.
A booklet released by a local board and endorsed by the mayor of the town of Papatoetoe blames local sex workers for serious damage to more than 40 parking signs in the last year and a half.
"Prostitutes use these as dancing poles," business district manager Donna Lee said.
"The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them. Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people," she explained.
The booklet blasting the workers comes as the city's leaders clamored for a crackdown on the street sex trade. Lawmakers are currently mulling a bill that would let local councils bar prostitutes from working in certain areas, the New Zealand Herald reported.
But sex workers are firing back at the booklet and the bill, which it said would be detrimental to communities.
"This will build resentment and fuel further hostilities," the national coordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective told the Herald.
