Labour Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani has formed a team of senior Ministry officials to investigate teenage pregnancies in Kilifi County where 13,624 cases were reported this year among learners aged 15 to 19. Mr Yatani Thursday told the National Assembly committee of Labour that the team will be dispatched to the county next week. “I have constituted a team of officials from the children’s department in the ministry to get to the bottom of this matter and we will share the report with you in order to get a way forward,” Mr Yatani told the committee.
The team will also extend their investigations to Kwale County before visiting other affected counties. “The problem is not only in Kilifi but shared across other parts of the country and we need to take action,” Mr Yatani told the MPs. The CS said the national government should work with county governments to address the issue of teen pregnancies.
Labour Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani
The committee chairman Hassan Wario said it was alarming that 13,000 young girls got pregnant during this year’s KCPE examinations. “We have concentrated so much in building the infrastructure until we forgot the social issues, these figures of teen pregnancies are scary,” Mr Wario said. “The picture is gloomy and something should urgently be done at the national level to address the problem,” Mr Wario added.
Nominated MP and Knut Secretary-General Wilson Sossion asked the ministry team to also address young girls working as commercial sex workers at the Coast.
Last week, Education CS Amina Mohamed decried the high number of teenage pregnancies reported and ordered the quality assurance team in the Education ministry to investigate and file a report of all cases of pregnancies among school girls. The CS noted that the move will enable the ministry to outline measures to curb such cases.