Friday, March 29, 2024

President Lungu strongly warns parents against marrying off their school going children

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PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu, addresses a gathering that welcomed him at Lundazi airstrip on Saturday where he went to inspect fields affected by Army Worms. PICTURE BY STEPHEN MUKOBEKO/ZANIS
PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu,
President Lungu has strongly warned parents against marrying off their school going girl children before completing school.

Speaking at Katungulu Primary School grounds in Kawambwa District of Luapula Province, President Lungu said marrying off young girls before completing School is digging a poverty grave for them.

He advised mothers to withstand their husbands when they decide to agree to marrying off their daughters when they should be in school.

The Head of State said Zambia needs educated women to drive the developmental agenda of the country.

Mr. Lungu promised that when in Lusaka, he will look at the legal provisions to see whether they were adequate for the protection of the girl child.

He added that Government will undertake to make further provisions of the law if the current laws are not adequate to protect the gild children.

Mr. Lungu also implored teachers to educate school going children on the important of resisting early marriages and concentrating on school for better economic opportunities in adult life.

Meanwhile, President Lungu has pledged to resolve all Party differences during his three days visit to Luapula Province

Mr. Lungu said it is important for the Party to work as a united front in the province.

He said the differences that has characterized the party due to those who stood as independents but have since been forgiven must be resolved while he is still in the region.

The President added that he will make sure that he attends to all the party issues because he is not only the President of Zambia but also the Patriotic Front which is the ruling Party.

Mr. Lungu maintained that Luapula is the strong hold of the Patriotic Front and should remain strong.

The Head of State has since left for Kawambwa where he is expected to inspect the Chishinga livestock breeding Centre, ZAFFICO plantation and the Kawambwa Tea Estate which is being revived.

18 COMMENTS

    • Visionless Lungu, how can you educate young girls & women when the entire PF banditry party is busy dancing to dununa backwardness?
      Its the PF bandits who undressed a UPND female member in front of veep Inonge. This is rhetoric of the highest level.
      How much is mealie meal?
      The Skeleton Key
      ~206~

    • Ba Lungu Busy hosting Dinners at the AU summit to discuss early Marriages Kanshi you are not even familiar with the provisions in the law that protect these children? You just show as a president that you do not have genuine passion for this fight

    • Zambia will not develop at pronouncements made at political related gatherings.ECL/PF should have an elaborate developmental agenda/plan for the entire nation and not these political patronizing statements meant to just appease the gullible Zambians who are mainly PF Cadres-sic.

  1. Lungu should answer the question why Parents are marrying off their children? Is this not poverty? Do these Parents have money to go to school? What is his govt doing about assisting under privileged children? Its pointless for this visionless and i?legitimate President to just point at problems without providing a solution. Useless Chakolwa President!

    • It is not always poverty that causes such phenomena to persist. Cultural norms and lack of knowledge/education as to the kind of damage early marriages do to ‘children’ is another major aspect to this. EARLY MARRIAGES are not unique to Zambia or the modern era—the Bible is full of tales/stories of early marriages. Our human history in nearly every culture/society on earth (including Zambia) debunks the idea that POVERTY is a sole causation of early/child marriages.

      It really is shallow to think families get rich and out of poverty after marrying off their girls because, quite frankly, in many cases these girls are usually married off to equally poor families. So, if ending poverty is not or rarely the main motivating factor, there must be other deep-rooted reasons why families…

    • continue:

      … continue marrying off their girls at such tender ages.

      Well, it is an undeniable truth that Education (especially for a girl-child) in many of our cultures is still not fully appreciated. Therefore other values and expectations get emphasized and drilled into our children. This gets even worse when children (especially girls) hit puberty. In the end, you find that “girls” themselves stop taking school seriously. To make matters even worse, it is around this very age that Parents start to get worried their child (girl) may end up pregnant. A situation which has its own cultural complexities and implications (shame, stigmatization, dishonor, extra.)

    • continue:

      Again, if it was just about poverty, early marriages wouldn’t be so common even in societies/countries where you hardly hear of poverty to the levels you find in Zambia. Places like the Middle East and Asia (especially Muslim Societies.) In fact, not too long ago, early marriages were very common even in the so called Western societies. So poverty alone can’t be the explanation. Nonetheless, campaigns of the sort President Lunga has embarked has helped raise awareness among people in these cultures/societies and cases of this nature have dropped significantly.

    • continue:

      Although the President can not do this alone, the legitimacy, concern, and urgency his office can bring to bear on this issue should help galvanize citizens and move into action. And Zambia will be well on its way to curbing this unfortunate cultural phenomenon. But it requires effort, persistence, time and resources to change certain cultural norms as old as human history itself.

      So, the problem is complex and it would be simplistic to blame it on poverty alone!

  2. If His Excellent Chagwa Lungu was not the President of Zambia what would UPNDonkeys talk about? Note that I am not suggesting the possibility of HH having become president last year instead of Mr Lungu for that would not and will never happen in his current life and in our lifetime.

  3. He is using state resources to resolve Party issuses…so he has carried with his partner Mumbi and the rest of the PF commitee!!

    • @Jay Jay, sometimes a little common sense is all it takes to stop being such an empty tin!

      Do you really think that if the President took a separate trip to Luapula to go and resolve Party issues he would have taken a Mazandhu bus and GBM kapasos? Don’t you think he still would have taken/used the same State resources you are complaining about? For as long as Lungu remains your President, no matter how much you hate this guy, he will be entitled to using State resources (planes, choppers, security detail, and all) everywhere and anywhere he goes. In fact he is doing you a favor by “killing two birds with one stone,” so speak.

      Chill man! These days you hardly make any sense at all. What happened to the Jay Jay of the old???

  4. Mr President also warn Mwakalombe and Kalumba for keeping our City dirty. If the want to keep street vendors fine. Provide toilets and bins which council should remove. This notion of earning a leaving without responsibility is unacceptable. It belongs to failed managers. And the two are failures.

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