The Central Regional Director of the Department of Gender, Mrs. Thywill Eyra Kpe has raised fear over a likely surge in cases of teenage pregnancy and child marriage in the region.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), hypothetically has shown that 13 million more child marriages could take place by 2030 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The UN agency also maintains that families are more likely to marry off daughters to alleviate the perceived burden of caring for them, especially in the anticipated economic fallout of the pandemic.
With this, Mrs. Kpe told ATL FM News the region could experience same. She explained “These pregnancies and child marriage, are mostly from the poorer population and such parents are caught there because of the pandemic looking for something to support their children. Parental oversight which has already been a problem may deepen. In the Central Region among the group we see mostly cohabiting and marrying their children off are single mothers; and so once there is a more difficult circumstance, like the corona virus has brought, it may push a lot of mothers who were taking monies from these girls to take care of themselves into child marriage”
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The central region, through the interventions of the Department of Gender and other related organisations, has made strides in reducing the incidence of teenage age pregnancies as well as sexual and gender-based violence.
Mrs. Thywill Kpe believes it is highly recommendable that more radical innovative interventions are adopted to engage the public during this COVID19 era. On the part of her department, she said a lot of advocacy programmes have been held to address the challenge prior to COVID 19. She however explained that alternative measures must be employed due to lack of face to face interactions with parents as a result of the pandemic. According to her, failure to fill in the knowledge gap in this period will have dire consequences.
SOURCE: ABA APPAH AIKINS/ATL FM NEWS
