Statesman News Service
MALDA, Jan. 30: United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the state social welfare department will jointly begin in February a study on the early marriage of girls in Malda.
The Unicef representative in Kolkata today met the Malda district magistrate, Mr Sridhar Ghosh, and sought administrative help to begin the study and launch an awareness campaign.
The social welfare department has selected six blocks to begin this study in and organise awareness programmes to prevent child marriage, which is a violation of human rights, compromising the development of girls and often resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation.
The Unicef official interacted with the social welfare officials today to know the root causes of early marriage here. The social welfare department pointed out the economic factor and lack of education in poor families.
Unicef expressed its interest in conducting a study here after going through a human resources development report, where Malda district recorded the highest figure of early marriage.
After taking into account the manpower of the social welfare department through the workers of ICDS (Integrated Child Development Scheme), the district administration has selected Ratua-I and II, Manikchak, Old Malda, English Bazaar and Kaliachak II blocks out of the 15 blocks in the district.
Of the other nine blocks, Kaliachak I and III, Harischandrapur I and II and Chanchal I and II have recorded several early marriage cases in the human resource study.
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