National Service Personnel joins fight against teenage pregnancy
Hundreds of National Service Personnel in the Cape Coast Metropolis on Saturday embarked on a vigorous house-to-house campaign against the rising levels of teenage pregnancy in some endemic communities within the metropolis.
The exercise which sought to create the awareness on the need to abstain from pre-marital sex, took the service personnel to Amamoma, Apewosika and other suburbs of Cape Coast.
The personnel distributed dozens of flyers, paraphernalia and educative reading materials as they moved from house-to-house in areas known as a haven for pre- marital acts.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview, Mr Wonder Tortor, Cape Coast Metro President of the National Service Personnel Association (NASPA,) said they were encouraged to join the campaign because the menace of teenage pregnancy in the metropolis was unacceptable.
He said service personnel in the metropolis were determined to counsel the youth on the need to abstain from pre-marital sex to prevent the health, economic and cultural implications associated with teenage pregnancy.
Mr Tortor described teenage pregnancy as a national pandemic and rallied the collective responsibility and contribution of every Ghanaian to reduce the menace.
At Amamoma, while some teenagers showed signs of remorse for engaging in unprotected pre-marital sex and shed tears, others said they engaged in it because they needed money to support themselves and that of their families.
Speaking in an interview with the GNA at Apewosika, some parents blamed the rise in teenage pregnancy in the community on its proximity to the University of Cape Coast (UCC) which allowed some unscrupulous men of the University to lure young girls with money and gifts to have sex with them.
They admonished parents to be awakened to their core responsibilities of providing the basic needs of their children to deter the men from luring the girls to satisfy their sexual libidos.
They suggested stiffer punishment for men who impregnated young girls and abandon them to serve as deterrent to others.
In one of the hideouts, some young boys and girls confirmed to GNA of having multiple sexual partners and confessed that they did it out of curiosity and for the fun.
Source: GNA