Visakhapatnam: On the occasion of National Girl Child Day, the voluntary organisations have decried adolescent child marriages and foetal sex determination tests in rural and urban areas. They have done a campaign on Wednesday to highlight inequalities towards girls in the country.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development has declared January 24 of every year to be celebrated as the National Girl Child Day to bring awareness in the society towards the development of girls to lead a respectable life.
“Everyone needs a mother but some are still not willing to have a female child. They feel girls are a burden. According to Lancet report, more than four lakh sex-selective abortions were made in the year 2011. This is an alarming situation for girls in our country,” a polytechnic student Sk. Shahista said in the campaign.
UNICEF district coordinator ST Sunanda said, “It is a fact that even today, female foeticides and child marriages are taking place in the country. The NGOs have stopped around 18 authorised child marriages and several unreported marriages in Vizag.”
The UNICEF had identified four states Assam, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh for girls’ capacity development programme. She is working on the pilot project in five mandals of Visakhapatnam.
She said, “Various government departments are involved in this four-year programme that started in 2016. It will soon be spread to 22 mandals and later to other districts.”
Based on a UNICEF survey in 2016-17, there are 19,000 adolescent girls in the five mandals including Chodavaram and Gajuwaka. Over 499 women were married off before they turned 18, 141 teen pregnancies took place and 157 adolescents became mothers. There were about 980 school dropouts in the age bracket of 16-18 years in these five mandals.
