Teenage pregnancies attributed to broken homes, parental neglect

Nkwabeng (B/A), Dec. 27, GNA - Madam Sophia Adalingeah, Nkoranza District Girls Education Officer of the Ghana Education Service has attributed the increasing cases of teenage pregnancies and school dropouts to the neglect by some parents and broken homes. Madam Adalingeah was speaking at the close of a four-day retreat of members of the Nkoranza South District Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church Women's Ministries at Nkwabeng. She expressed concern about the attitude of some men to shirk their responsibilities to their children after divorce and condemned the practice, saying the children could not be made to suffer the consequences of separation. The District Girls Education Officer emphasized that it was the responsibility of both parents to take care of the children until they became adults.

Madam Adalingeah advised women not to engage their children in economic activities that could affect their progress in education. She urged parents to provide the needs of their daughters so that unscrupulous men would not influence them with assistance. "Some men use gifts as conduit to get access to such girls and by providing our girls with their needs we would be saving them from such problems", she added and urged parents to report rape cases to the police. Pastor Martin Appiah-Kyeremeh, District Pastor of the SDA urged women not to feel inferior to men since they also had knowledge and intelligence to support the men in promoting the development of the communities. Mrs Cecilia Appiah, Brong-Ahafo Regional Secretary of the Mid-West Ghana Conference Women's Ministry in Sunyani urged the women to be very ideal in life. Mr Emmanuel Kwasi Adu, Assistant Accountant at the Nkoranza Branch of the Fiagya Rural Bank advised the women to form cooperative groups and save with the banking institutions to enable them to obtain loans to expand their economic activities.