Monday, Jul 7, 2008    Text size: 

Investigations conducted by the Arusha Times have revealed that retailers, including mobile disc peddlers, film outlets and retail shops, are displaying and distributing adult videos to all consumers regardless of age. Most of the movies available are pirated mainstream Hollywood films. The majority of them come from China and Hong Kong but others were made in Dar es Salaam, 300 miles away.

The explosion of adult material is fueled by recent mass availability of films on discs in various formats including DVD, CD-ROM and DiVx. The price for a single DVD ranges between $2-$3, but adult material starts at $4 and goes up.

"Few people buy films nowadays as most can easily download them online," a Pagani retailer said. "Business is bad because the market is saturated with hundreds of readily available, cheap film titles."

Previously, adult movies were seen in "TV shacks" in slum areas where people would pay a few cents to watch films and live soccer matches. The TV shacks reportedly continue to screen pornographic films at night.

Customers of street peddlers are mostly children, especially now that schools are closed for summer. A peddler who was confronted by a reporter said, "I never watch the films I sell and they are many of them, if some happens to have nude scene then that has nothing to do with me, besides all modern movies feature some dirty scenes, yes even those being produced locally."

In recent months Arusha's Regional Commissioner Isidore Shirima condemned the practice of screening adult material in TV shacks, especially to children. He vowed that he would make sure that the shacks in slum areas would be forced to close down.

Since he made that vow more of them have opened.