Castrate men who sleep with underage girls, says M...

Castrate men who sleep with underage girls, says Mutsvangwa

Zim Now Writer

Paedophiles must be castrated so as to deter men from sleeping with underage girls, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa has said.

Mutsvangwa said this after Matabeleland North proportional representation MP and Health Parliamentary Portfolio Committee chairperson, Ruth Labode, demanded to know what government was doing to curb rising teenage pregnancies.

“To have 700 young girls aged 10 to 14 getting pregnant is very sad. A 10-year-old is a child. What has gone wrong with our people?” Labode said.

Minister Mutsvangwa, in response, called for more deterrent penalties.

“A 10-year-old is a baby and for any person in his right sense to actually take her as a woman, I think there is an element of madness which needs to be dealt with; an element of cruelty or animal behaviour which needs to be dealt with,” Mutsvangwa said.

She said penalties for having sex with underage girls should be quite high, promising to take the issue up with her Cabinet colleagues.

“We need to get that report and I certainly agree with her (Labode) so that at least we can work together as a country. It is about all of us as leaders in the areas where we live. It is also about us as parents to work together, united as Zimbabweans to fight against this evil.”

The latest statistics by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency released on disaggregated data on the distribution of births by age of mother showed that 700 girls aged 10 to 14 gave birth in 2022.

A survey on teen pregnancies conducted by the child rights group, Zvandiri, earlier this year, disclosed that 95% of teenage pregnancies were unintended and attributed to poverty.

Another report by the Family Aids Caring Trust claimed that between September 2021 and August 2022, over 20 000 pupils dropped out of school after falling pregnant.