Take steps to prevent child marriages, ASR District Collector tells officials

District Collector A.S. Dinesh Kumar focuses on tackling child marriages, dropout rates, and pregnancies among girl children in PVTGs.

Alluri Sitharama Raju District Collector A.S. Dinesh Kumar has directed the authorities to focus on girl children from Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and those who are dropped from the schools to tackle the social evil of child marriages in the district. He said that a study should be conducted on the reasons for child marriages, its consequences among the girl children and steps must be taken to come up with measures to eradicate them. He conducted a district-level child marriages committee hybrid meeting here on Friday, with the authorities concerned.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Dinesh Kumar said that the authorities had stopped 25 child marriages during the last two years, but during the same time period, there were 357 cases of pregnancies during teenage and 174 lactating mothers below 18 years of age. He said that village-level committees should take the responsibility to conduct awareness programmes, identify suspected child marriage cases and initiate steps to stop them by informing elders about the consequences. Every marriage in the villages should be registered, he said.

Mr. Dinesh Kumar has also asked the Education Department authorities to monitor Class VIII and IX girl student dropouts, He informed that they have identified 2,276 dropouts in the district. The authorities should take steps to re-enrol them in schools or provide any skill development training programme. G.K Veedhi district has more number of dropouts and a pilot project must be started from January 3 to organise skill development training programme for the dropout girl students, he said.

The Collector also asked the officials to submit reports about child marriages by 15th of every month. The Mahila police should take the initiative to collect the information, he directed.

District Educational Officer Brahmaji Rao, DMHO Jameel Basha, officials from Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Women & Child Welfare Department and others were present.