The founder of a charitable organisation in Papua New Guinea's capital says the number of child sex workers in Port Moresby has gone up because there are many more people with wealth.
A recent report in the Post Courier newspaper cites a 30 percent increase in the number of minors working as prostitutes in nightclubs.
Father John Glynn is a retired Catholic priest who has lived in PNG for almost 50 years and several years ago founded WeCare, which works with children and young women in squatter settlements.
He says the growth of the oil, gas and mining industries is creating huge amounts of wealth for a particular sector of the population but there is no trickle-down effect.
"And as I always tell people poverty is the greatest destroyer of the human spirit. So, on the one hand, you have this enormous poverty and this desperate need for money and on the other side you've got people with money to burn in their pockets."
Father John Glynn.
