08 Nov 2020

As cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV) continue to rise, different organisations and entities continue to put efforts into fighting the pandemic.

The fight has however, been made difficult by the fact that community engagement through conventional methods such as workshops and kgotla meetings was not possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Jwaneng District Child Protection Unit on Thursday resorted to using Facebook Live to address the Jwaneng community on such matters, especially challenges faced by children.

In her address, Jwaneng mayoress Ms Olga Ditsie appealed for parents’ support in an effort to address these challenges, saying families could strengthen child development and put them in a better position to learn.

She said challenges faced by children included bullying, truancy, sexual abuse, neglect and teenage pregnancy. 

Ms Ditsie said that statistics indicated that since the beginning of this year, 47 teenage pregnancies were registered in Jwaneng.

 This meant that close to five pregnancies are registered in the town every month, or at least one pregnancy per week.

Ms Ditsie said that considering the small size of the town, the numbers were chilling. 

She said that on the other hand, four defilement cases were reported between July and September, a slight decrease from the five reported in the previous three month.

She said that other cases such as rape and assault were also high. 

She said since research showed that schools were the most effective place to help children develop social and emotional skills capacities was the reason they were appealing to the institutions to come on board.

She said that shortage of accommodation in Jwaneng which led to overcrowding had also been fingered to exacerbate societal ills, especially health and gender based violence.

Ms Ditsie said that as the District Child Protection Committee, they were therefore determined to come up with prevention and intervention programmes in schools as a way of sharing responsibility between schools and the rest of the community.

She said that some of the planned interventions included creating awareness on parenting duties, establishing ward child protection committees, promoting child friendly schools and encourage the community at large to be active in the fight against GBV.

Ms Ditsie also said that they were however, alive to the fact that such efforts might take a while to bear fruits. 

She also assured her personal support on all efforts to eradicate challenges faced by children as she said that it was her wish to see Jwaneng being a safe and enabling environment for children to grow and reach their full potential as promote by Vision 2036 pillar of human and social development. Ends