Male Hotel Housekeepers in High Demand

When a hotel chambermaid was allegedly 'D-Straussed' in the US, the hospitality industry was infuriated as if it was the first time it ever happened. Advocacy on the 'Right to Sleep with the Right Person' became the campaign message. The hospitality industry in Ghana, plagued by a culture of silence, had no hairs raised.

The 'D-Straussing' of female hotel housekeepers is pushed under the carpet in the hospitality industry in Ghana. Victims are usually relieved of their duties with alacrity and since rape is still a stigma here in Ghana, silence always seems to be a better option.

'The very housekeepers are the ones that initiate the cause of 'D-Straussing' as they break their own rules of work', commented a 3-Star hotel manageress. 'Others prey on wealthy hotel guests and get themselves into a mess when their initiative backfires,' she added.

It appears that the culprits seem to know when their rooms will be cleaned and lurk inside for a willing or unwilling victim. They will usually insist on their room door to be closed while the housekeeper is in to serve as a trap. As a rule, the hotel room doors must be left ajar when the housekeeper calls and the guest refuses to leave their room.

'It is, however, undeniable that male hotel guests are the culprits just as the female guests are to male housekeepers', retorted Jonny Boateng, a hotel manager. 'Unfortunately, after being cross-trained, males hardly stay in the housekeeping department',

Student interns, inexperienced as they are, have been noted to constitute a high percentage of hushed housekeeper rape cases.

In an interview with the HR manageress of one hotel in Accra, she iterated that it has become their hotel policy to recruit male housekeepers but that, however, is appearing to become a chase after the wind.