I married at school – Muntaka

The Majority Chief Whip and National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Asawase, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, yesterday sent the whole Parliament House into rapturous laughter when he said that he got married to his ‘first’ wife in his second year at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) at the age of 31 and felt proud of that achievement.

He was making a contribution to a statement made by the NDC Member of Parliament for Akatsi North, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, to condemn the restriction put on female trainee teachers not to get pregnant while being trained in order to become good role models for their pupils and students.

He said the code of conduct for female trainee teachers clearly conflicted with the tenets of the Constitution, which allows females to get married at the age of 18 and give birth at the same age. He stressed that in other tertiary institutions, female students were never restricted in whatever they did because they were seen as mature people who could decide for themselves.

He said male counterparts in Colleges of Education could give birth but they were not restricted from writing the final exams. So why should the female students be burdened with such restriction when they could still write the exams and give birth.

Hon Muntaka, using himself as an example, said as a student at KNUST, he got married to his ‘first’ wife and that there were many people such as him who got married while being students in school and nothing barred them from that.

His example sent his colleague members in the house into rapturous laughter with the Member of Parliament for Old Tafo, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, rising on a point of order to tell the House that the Hon. Muntaka was misleading the House because as far as he was concerned he (Muntaka) got married to a young lady just last year.

In reply, the Asawase MP admitted that it was true that he got married again last year and that the lady he got married to was his second wife and that he was proud to be married to two women as a Muslim.

The MP for Akatsi North in his statement said the prevention of pregnant female trainee teachers from writing their semester examinations had a lot of ramifications for the students involved and the society as a whole.

According to the MP for Akatsi North, a female trainee teacher desirous of continuing with her education could resort to unsafe abortion which could create future health problems and even render her infertile in the end.

He, therefore, called on heads of Colleges of Education to review the code of conduct for female students so that they could be allowed to procreate while they pursued their academic work.

All the MPs who contributed to the statement including the MP for Tarkwa/Nsuaem, Gifty Kusi; MP for Weija/Gbawe, Rosemund Abrah and MP for Asuogyaman, Kofi Osei Ameyaw, condemned such a policy at the teacher training institutions saying it was not only outmoded but also conflicted with their fundamental human rights as mature students.