TEENAGE PREGNANCY BOOM IN RURAL TAMALE COMMUNITIES....(Page 26)

Story: Vincent Adedze, Tamale

TEENAGE pregnancy in 10 peri-urban communities of the Tamale metropolis is said to have assumed alarming proportions.
School dropout rate is also high among both boys and girls in those communities.
The situation has been attributed to parental neglect and lack of supervision.
The affected communities are Gurugu, Malshegu, Dungu, Nyanshegu, Kanvilli, Dunyin, Builpela, Vitting, Nyohini, and Kakpayili-Kpanvo.
The Metropolitan Youth Co-ordinator of the National Youth Council (NYC), Mr Eric Gyan Ansah, disclosed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic in Tamale.
According to him the information was gathered by the NYC during the implementation of a one-and-a-half year advocacy project on women and child rights in the 10 beneficiary communities.
The project, he said, included the sensitisation of the communities and building the capacity of community leaders to help build a vibrant and democratic society as a strategy in protecting the rights of the vulnerable.
It was sponsored by the United States Democratic and Human Rights Fund of the US Embassy with collaboration from the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), National Commission on Children (NCC) and the Women’s Department of the National Council on Women and Development (NCWD).
Mr Ansah said findings by his outfit within the one-and-a-half years of the project further showed that majority of the young girls at Nyohini, for instance, were pregnant while the other communities also recorded similar trends.
He also expressed concern about the manner in which most of the youth at Nyohini had taken up trading instead of going to school.
“The family value system has broken down these days so people no longer cater for or check the activities of wayward children,” the co-ordinator noted.
According to him, findings by the NYC also revealed that spousal abuse had reduced over the years in the beneficiary communities.
Mr Ansah, therefore, called on chiefs, teachers, assembly members and parents to join in the campaign to sensitise the youth to immoral acts that ruined their future.
He also entreated the government and the international community to support efforts at youth development in the country.