Malta is a growing destination for the trafficking of prostitutes from countries such as Russia and Ukraine.

Police vice squad statistics show that the number of people charged in court for trafficking women in the country and living off their earnings have shot up in the last four years.

While 14 people were charged for soliciting prostitution in 2000, the number rose to 164 in the first 10 months of this year. Three were charged with trafficking people for the first time in 2003. But in 2004, 11 people were charged with trafficking while another two were indicted for living off prostitution.

Speaking at a press conference by the Maltese Association of Social Workers, marking Social Work Action Day 2004, with the theme Violence and Trafficking: Social Workers Against Exploitation, Assistant Police Commissioner Michael Cassar said that since the beginning of the year, the police had arrested and charged 13 people for allegedly bringing young women from eastern Europe over to Malta and then forcing them to become prostitutes.

Mr Cassar said the women usually know that they would be living with a man during their stay in Malta and also that they would have to engage in sexual intercourse with their "hosts". "They usually come with the intention to stay for a definite period of between two weeks and three months," Mr Cassar said.

However, a good number of east European girls who prostitute themselves in Malta are deceived before they come over since they would have been promised a job as waitresses and cleaners in hotels.

Mr Cassar explained that traffickers often took advantage of the girls' financial difficulties, paying their air tickets, procuring visas and giving them pocket money in some cases. They would ask them to "pay" their dues "in kind" once in Malta. "The girls would have to buy back their lives by prostituting themselves," he said.

The officer said the police had cracked two tightly knit criminal rings that were trafficking Russian and Ukrainian women into Malta and forcing them to prostitute themselves. Some ended up in strip clubs and others were forced to have sexual intercourse with a number of men every day against payment. In the latter case, the women were given one-third of the earnings.

The police found out that, in some cases, Russian girls had been sold from one pimp to another five times in six weeks, each time for Lm700 each.

Mr Cassar said the police did not know of any case where children had been exploited for prostitution so far.

"Court sentences simply do not reflect the effort put into these cases by the police and the public's sensitivity on the matter," Mr Cassar said.