Parents have been charged to take advantage of the free SHS policy by encouraging the pregnant girl-child to go back to school after childbirth.
This is to help teenage girls whose education have been truncated through unwarranted pregnancies go back to school through the re-entry policy.
Assistant Chief Statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, Peter Takyi Peprah made the appeal at a Stakeholders Review Meeting on ‘Ending Child Marriages’ in Ghana.
The two-day stakeholders meeting is to discuss key implementation efforts undertaken by partners in 2018 as well as share new data evidence regarding prevalence rate of child marriages in Ghana. It is also to review and update the operational plan for the 2019-2020 cycle.
Using a multiple cluster survey results collected from the period 2017 to 2018, the Assistant Chief Statistician, Peter Takyi Peprah said Child Marriages are very high in Northern Region with 27. 8 percent, followed by Upper East with 27.5 percent and Volta region with 23.9 percent.
This he said is the result for women who married before 18 years.
He noted that Economic Insecurity and poverty cannot be ruled out as one of the key factors for forcing children into marriages.
Mr. Takyi Peprah however, called on parents whose underage daughters get pregnant to take their children back to school instead of forcing them into marriages.
Director from the Girls Education Unit, GES, Benedicta Seidu called on men to support the agenda to end child marriages in Ghana.
Child marriages disproportionately affects girls more than boys. Among boys aged 20-24 years, only two per cent were married before the age of 18 compared to 21 per cent of girls who were married per-maturely according to a Demographic and Health Survey data.
In Ghana, teenage pregnancy is said to be a cause and consequence of child marriages. Ghana is committed to eliminating child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with point 5.3 of the SDGs.
