The Chief of the Gorogo Community, Nab Tebabug Kusuhizure, disclosed this at a durbar organized at the Gorogo Community in the District on Friday.

  The durbar, organized by the Integrated Youth Needs and Welfare (INTYON), an NGO, and supported by UNICEF, brought together eight communities and was also used to stage a number of dramas on child marriage, exclusive breastfeeding, skilled delivery, hand washing and open defecation.

   The Chief said the Committee made up of elders, assembly members, youths and opinion leaders among others, was established in 2016 with the mandate to investigate cases of child marriages, prescribe punishment for offenders and how to handle victims of child marriages.

     He tasked the Committee to work towards coming out with the report in May to help contribute to ending the phenomenon in the area, and called on parents to ensure that they provided the needs of their daughters, particularly  those in school to help prevent them from falling prey to men.

   “The precious values of the girl-child cannot be overemphasized and as parents you need to place high premium on the upbringing of your daughters by taking good care of them to finish their education instead of giving them out for marriage.

“As a traditional leader of this community I and my elders and the Committee will not countenance any parent who would want to sacrifice the daughter on the altar of early marriage, ” the Chief warned .

   The District Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in charge of the Talensi District, Ms Evelyn Domeh Naaso, in a speech read for her, lauded the NGO and UNICEF for complementing the efforts of the GHS to ensure that women in labour attended to health facilities to deliver rather than homes, mothers practiced exclusive breastfeeding, hand washing and to end open defecation.

    She told the community members  that  women who delivered at  the health facilities and exclusively breastfed their children for six months  did not only look healthier, but their children too were healthy, and entreated mothers to take advantage of the opportunity to improve upon their health status.  

  Mr Issah Ibrahim, the Executive Director of INTYON, said his outfit in collaboration with the Talensi and Nabdam District Assemblies, the Ghana Health Service, the Ghana Education Service as well as the Department for Children with support from UNICEF had come far with the implementation of the one year Bahaviour Change Communication (BCC) project.

  He said the project was achieving its set targets and objectives of changing the attitudes of the communities to adopt good practices such as ending child marriage, promoting exclusive breastfeeding, ending open defecation and ensuring that pregnant women deliver in health facilities as well as accessed antenatal and postnatal care at health facilities.

  Mr Hillary Adongo, the Project Coordinator in charge of BCC, said the 160 Model Mothers and the volunteers trained under  the project in  the communities within the two districts were doing well as  revealed by  the  monitoring and evaluation visits conducted by INTYON.