Kampala, Uganda
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has agreed to engage with the country’s Anglican Church leadership to resolve an impasse which has seen thousands of expectant school girls locked out of the country’s church-founded schools since the beginning of the academic year.
In January, at the start of the academic year, a sharp disagreement emerged between the government and Anglican Church of Uganda over the fate of thousands of teenage mothers who were impregnated during the two-year COVID-19 lockdown in the country.
The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu addressing headteachers of church-founded schools in Uganda on Friday at Ankrah Foundation in Mukono, Uganda.
The government wanted all the schools in the country to allow expectant teenagers and teenage mothers to return to school, but the Anglican Church rejected the idea. The church insisted that schools were not equipped with the necessary facilities to take care of the health challenges that emerge in the first three months of the pregnancy.
“School owners have the challenge of providing facilities for expectant mothers,” said Dr Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda.
Kaziimba also expressed concern that the presence of expectant teenagers and mothers in schools would mislead girls into pre-marital sex. He suggested that the expectant girls be kept out school in the meantime as the government’s directive was being studied for its implications before implementing it.
The government insisted that no student should be denied access to classrooms even if the child was pregnant. Vice-President Jessica Alupo asked parents and teachers to amicably discuss the issue while teenage mothers were still in class. But the church has since stood its ground and some head teachers in church-founded schools have suspended expectant students. Before COVID-19 struck in 2020, primary and secondary schools in Uganda were not allowed to accept expectant students.
But on Friday, Archbishop Kaziimba disclosed that the church and government had registered some progress in their effort to resolve the challenge of expectant learners.
“I am pleased to inform you that President Museveni has promised to engage us on how to absorb and cater for the affected girls without upsetting the schools’ systems,” Kaziimba said without mentioning how that would be successfully done without the necessary infrastructure in many of the schools in Uganda.
Kaziimba further noted that he has to ensure that the other innocent girls in schools are not exposed to the danger as they cater for the “lost sheep”.
In other comments, Kaziimba said the number of children both boys and girls who were sexually assaulted during the COVID-19 lockdown in Uganda was alarming.
“In Lango sub-region alone in northern Uganda, 23,549 teenage girls were impregnated,” Kaziimba said. “When the provincial secretary lost his mother recently and we went for the burial, the diocesan bishop made an altar call for all the teenage girls who were pregnant to come for special prayers with the Archbishop. I had never seen such a big number of expectant girls. I had to pray for them.”
He also revealed that the Anglican Church of Uganda, through its Directorate of Education, has highlighted the significance of facilitating post COVID-19 psycho-social support to school communities to all the diocesan education secretaries.
“We have also sanctioned Mothers and Fathers Union members to work with the diocesan secretaries and the secretaries of education to offer Christian-based counselling to the schools,” he said.
Kaziimba appealed to authorities in Uganda to bring to book men who impregnated the girls. He noted that some of the perpetrators were uncles and fathers of the victims.
“We continue to ask family heads not to conceal information regarding defilement and rape to avoid the temptation of forcing children into early marriages in exchange of money, goats and cows,” Kaziimba said.
He made the remarks at Ankrah Foundation in Mukono District, central Uganda, on Friday during a two-day conference for the Anglican heads and deputies of education institutions that ran on the theme, “Hope Beyond Affliction”.
The participants resolved to promote psycho-social support to staff and students to enable them cope with the challenges caused by COVID-19.
