Telangana stands fourth in human trafficking cases across the country as per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). “Girls married at an early age are mostly deserted or sold off by their husbands within a short span or it (marriage) is used as a trap to lure girls for trafficking. Over 30.55 per cent girls are school dropouts in Telangana,” says Plan India, an NGO and a member of Plan International Federation, which has taken up Girls Advocacy programme.
About 34.7 per cent of the women currently aged between 20 and 24 years were married before the legal age of marriage in Medak district as per the study conducted by district level household and facility survey - 4 (DLHS) held in 2012-13. It was followed by 32.7 per cent in Khammam district, 30.2 per cent in Nalgonda district, 28 per cent in Ranga Reddy, 27.3 per cent in Adilabad, 25 per cent in Warangal 23.8 per cent in Nizamabad, 23.5 per cent in Medak district.
According to another survey report, school dropout rate among girls between class 1 and class 10 stood at 50.4 per cent in Mahabubnagar followed by 50.02 per cent in Ranga Reddy district, 42.57 per cent in Medak, 42.38 per cent in Adilabad, 41.49 in Warangal, 40.09 in Nalgonda, 32.83 in Khammam 31.98 in Hyderabad district.
Recently, Mahita, an NGO working with Plan India held a media awareness programme here explaining about not much focused facts about girl child in the State.
“We are focusing on four key issues — child marriages, child trafficking, secondary education and job oriented vocational training. Large number of secondary education students are dropping out from the schools and parents are looking at them as a burden, resulting in child marriages, leading to increase in maternal mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR) There should be much focus on improving facilities for secondary education and providing them revenue generation opportunities. We hope that this would arrest dropout of girls from school and getting married at an early age,” said Amoga Laxmi, a representative of Mahita.
Adding a point or two, M.S. Chandra, Director, CARPED, an NGO working on child rights, said that there was no scientific data available to ascertain the facts in regard to child marriages, trafficking and child dropouts.
He said that there was a need to prepare data based on scientific methods to address these issues.
