Chiefs in Mzimba have pressed an alarm button calling for interventions to halt child marriages which they say are rampant in the western part of the dominantly Ngoni district.<\/p>\n
Speaking Tuesday during an interface with officials from National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) at Mzalangwe in Mzimba Hora Constituency, the chiefs said school going children as young as 14 get married in the area.<\/p>\n
They cited school curriculum and lack of role models as the reasons for the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese days children are taught about sex while they are still young. This makes them practice what they learn in school. What would be the purpose of teaching sex education to standard three pupils, for example? Such lessons orient children to sex and they end up getting married while they are still young,\u201d said Group Village Headman Hanock Ngwira.<\/p>\n
He said in many instances chiefs intervene by plucking the children back from their marriages and put them back in school but they get frustrated with some uncooperative parents who consent to such practices.<\/p>\n
Several chiefs shared the same story.<\/p>\n
They said there was need to sensitise the communities on the legal marrying age for girls as passed by Parliament.<\/p>\n
Regional civic education officer (North) Vincent Kalawa said Nice has an obligation to provide civic education on several cross-cutting issues such as child marriages as they border on human rights.<\/p>\n
He said his institution will make arrangements to intervene on the matter so that the girl child is kept in school and allowed to complete their education.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will also arrange for a full interface meeting with duty bearers drawn from various sectors so that they provide answers to the many questions that have been asked here. We will ensure that we create such a platform so that community voices are heard by those in positions,\u201d said Kalawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chiefs in Mzimba have pressed an alarm button calling for interventions to halt child marriages which they say are rampant in the western part of the dominantly Ngoni district. Speaking Tuesday during an interface with officials from National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) at Mzalangwe in Mzimba Hora Constituency, the chiefs said school going children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33764,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33759\/revisions\/33764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}