School drop-outs, child marriages rise in Rushinga

Fungai Lupande

Mashonaland Central Bureau

Rushinga is one of the districts in Mashonaland Central Province with a high rate of child marriages, teen pregnancies and school drop-outs, amid indications that young people in the district are becoming sexually active as early as 12 years.

National Aids Council (NAC) district Aids coordinator Mr Eric Taramusi said the district was making concerted efforts to reduce child marriages and school drop-outs through various programmes targeting teenagers in and out of school.

Mr Taramusi said a baseline survey revealed that young people in Rushinga start engaging in sexual activities early compared to other places where statistics show that they start at 14 years.

In 2018, 551 learners dropped out of school and 62 percent of them were girls.

About 19 percent of last year’s school drop-outs were due to marriage.

Mr Taramusi said statistics of school drop-outs for this year had not yet been recorded.

“Statistics at Magaranhewe Secondary School show that they were having an average of 11 to 12 school drop-outs due to child marriages, but last year they only had two,” he said.

“Major drivers of dropping out of school include poverty and failure of parents to pay school fees. Forty-eight teen pregnancies were recorded in 2018 and 45 were recorded in 2019.”

Mr Taramusi said the district managed to reduce HIV infection from 10,6 percent to 6,1 percent, according to 2018 HIV/AIDS estimates.

He said HIV incidents stood at 56 in 2018, but were down to 42 last year.

“Rushinga has a youth bulge and the 10-24 age group constitutes about 32,8 percent of the population,” said Mr Taramusi. “About 941 Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STIs) were recorded in 2018 and in 2019 they reduced by 2,1 percent to 921.

“21,3 percent of the STIs were from the youths.

“However, we see a positive change in the district and we are expecting another decline in this year’s statistics.”

Rushinga Township and Chimhanda are the STI hotspots and have the highest cases of 2,6 percent and 1,4 respectively.

Mazowe Bridge, Rusambo, Chimandau and Mukosa were also classified as hotspots.

These areas are either mining sites or business centres.

The National Aids Council is working with Safaids and other partners and has programmes running in these hotspot areas to mitigate the challenges.

“We have a DREAMS programme (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS free, Mentored and Safe) in 10 wards,” said Mr Taramusi.

“The programme has three components which are comprehensive sexuality education, parent child communication and education subsidies.

“So far we have trained 35 teachers on comprehensive sexuality education and our target is 55.

“About 20 parent child communication facilitators have been trained in 10 wards, they have managed to reach out to 478 and our target was 500.

“The programme is targeting payment of school fees for 300 vulnerable girls, including those interested to be re-integrated into schools.”