Bylaw fighting teenage marriages starts to bite
Some of the village chairpersons attend a meeting to discuss how to enforce a byelaw that fights teenage pregnancies in Petta Sub-county, Tororo District, at the weekend. PHOTO | FRED WAMBEDE
What you need to know:
- In order to contain early marriages, a sub-county in Tororo District passed a bylaw titled: The protection of the girldchild against pregnancy and promotion of education.
Rose Athieno, a 16–year–old, dreamed of becoming a nurse and she would lit a lamp each night, in her father’s hut, to revise her books.
Hailing from a remote village of Petta Central North in Petta Sub-county in Tororo District, she used to study at Petta Community Secondary School, which is a few kilometres away from her home.
“I was a serious student and each term, I got good grades,” Athieno, who dropped out of school last year while in Senior Three due to pregnancy and now does casual jobs such as gardening to earn a living, told the Daily Monitor on Saturday.
Anthieno’s dream was shattered after she started a friendship with a youthful married man during a cultural fete for a neighbour.
In Tororo and Busia districts, when a person dies, the mourners organise funeral fundraising ceremonies, a cultural practice common in the neigbouring Kenya, to raise money to send off the deceased. The ceremony involves playing music and dancing.
Ms Mary Kevin Athieno, who serves as the minister of gender in the Tieng Adhola Cultural institution, said the cultural practice is pushing young people into early marriages. “It also increases the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV among our girls,” she said.
Petta is one of the 42 units in Tororo District that has the highest cases of child pregnancies and child marriages standing at 29 percent. Previously it stood at 33.3 percent.
In order to contain the vices, the sub-county leadership in June this year passed a bylaw titled: The protection of the gildchild against pregnancy and promotion of education.
The bylaw, which has since been certified by the district and is being enforced criminalises, among other things, teenage pregnancies, child marriages and child labour. It also prohibits children from attending vigils or any other function beyond 6pm and compels parents to take their children to school.
It also provides that any person, parent or guardian who contravenes any of the foregoing provisions commits an offence and shall be liable to a fine of not more than two currency points or imprisonment not exceeding 6 months or both.
The LC1 chairperson for Petta Sub-County, Mr Henry Odoi Onyango, said the sub-county has appointed enforcement officers to enforce the bylaws.
“It was passed by the sub-county after wider consultation and the community fully supported it. Penalties will soon catch up with the offenders,” he said.
Mr Hanington Omollo, one of the enforcement officers in the sub-county, said they will not tolerate any interference in the course of their work.
“This bylaw has come at the right time and anybody who will try to obstruct us from doing our work will be held responsible,” he said.
The bylaw, which came into existence with support from Tororo District Youth Advocacy Network in collaboration with Ipas Africa Alliance, also allows bars to operate from midday to 10pm.
Mr Ali Mugerwa Mabuya, the district biostatistician for Tororo, said child marriages and teenage pregnancies currently stands at 15,000 per single quarter across the district.
sensitisation
According to the figures from the National Strategy to end child marriages and teenage pregnancy 2022/2023- 2026- 2027, one out of five women in Uganda engage in sexual activity before the age of 15 and about 34 percent are married before the age of 18.
