Robert Kyagulanyi, the National Unity Platform (NUP) party President has blamed the increasing cases of teenage pregnancies on the COVID-19 lockdown saying children were not adequately planned for.
On Friday last week as the party commemorated its heroes, Kyagulanyi said as the government was installing a countrywide lockdown and a closure of schools, it didn’t plan well on when schools will resume, which left many children with no hope.
According to UNICEF, the media was awash with reports of child neglect, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse during and after the lockdown.
The report indicates that between March 2020 and June 2021, there was a 22.5 percent increase in pregnancy among girls aged 10-24 seeking first antenatal care from 80,653 to 98,810.
“One of the reasons why teenage pregnancies have increased is because educational institutions were closed,” Kyagulanyi said.
“If we were the government in power, we would have found a solution to school reopening because education determines the future of the next generation,” he said.
He lauded his wife Barbie Itungo and the Luwero MPs who extended assistance to teenage mothers on Thursday last week in Luwero district.
Kyagulanyi condemned the government for borrowing a lot of money in the guise of helping Ugandans during the lockdown period from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and later being misused and mismanaged by some government officials.
“During the first COVID-19 wave, the government collected 282 Pickup trucks from various people and were meant to aid in the COVID fight but none of the trucks is being seen,” Kyagulanyi said.
“One will wonder where the cars that were received as donations and were meant to ease the COVID-19 fight have gone to. The country has more new police and military cars than those meant for handling COVID-19 or ambulances,” Kyagulanyi said.
He added that one would wonder why the security budget keeps on increasing each year yet the health budget keeps on dropping.
“We are currently battling with COVID-19 but the government is just purchasing more security equipment instead of purchasing COVID-19 vaccines. Currently, the people are in need of medical assistance,” he said.
Kyagulanyi also accused the government of not equally distributing the relief money that was meant to help the vulnerable people during the 42days’ lockdown.
“Most of the vulnerable people who were supposed to get relief money didn’t get it. The majority of the people were left out yet their jobs had been closed,” Kyagulanyi said.
He also said although the 2021 elections are gone, “Many Ugandans are missing from their loved ones not because they embezzled public funds but were fighting for what was right. As NUP, we shall not stop fighting and demanding for the release of our people and all political prisoners,” Kyagulanyi said.
He also lauded the media for their noble job of transmitting information to the public.
