KUCHING: The Sarawak Women for Women Society (SWWS) agrees that subjects concerning sexual health education, responsibilities of raising a child and the consequences of teenage pregnancy should be taught to students as young as 13 years old.
Its president Margaret Bedus said this was important to empower young people with such knowledge and to prevent any unintended teenage pregnancies.
“We totally support the call for these subjects to be taught early in secondary schools,” she told New Sarawak Tribune yesterday.
She was responding to the call made by Sarawak United People’s Party’s (SUPP) Kho Teck Wan on the matter.
Kho was commenting on the recent data from the Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Ministry, which showed the increasing teenage pregnancy rate in the state.
Margaret said schools not only played an important role in guiding both young girls and boys, but the community and parents as well should provide useful and correct information with regard to sex education, respecting individual rights and knowing the consequences of one’s actions.
“For SWWS, we have also been organising programmes and engaging with secondary school students at selected schools, subject to whenever our resources are available,” she said.
She said normally SWWS would hold interactive talks on reproductive health and health relationship between a boy and a girl.
“Last year, we were roped in to join the ‘Randau’ programme by the Social Development Council and were able to conduct a programme for secondary school students. We were then able to reach out to more rural students.
“However, this is more of an ad hoc programme. We need to have a more comprehensive, interactive and consistent programme for a more effective outcome,” she stressed.
She said it was also a challenging time to carry out programmes currently due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as such there was a need to relook at how these students could be reached, especially those in rural areas.
