Design action plan to prevent child marriages: Collector Harinarayanan

Nellore: The meeting headed by district Collector M Harinarayanan over prevention of child marriages has decided to design a comprehensive action plan in the interest of eradicating child marriages in the district. The meeting, held here on Thursday, also stressed the need of coordination between revenue, police, education, women & child departments to achieve the goal.

Speaking on the occasion, Collector Harinarayanan said that despite the government implementing several programmes to eradicate child marriages, there was no expected results, due lack of proper awareness among the public over the issue. He said that poor financial status, coupled with inability to brought up girls any longer due to various reasons, parents wantonly performing child marriages. This particular scenario has been witnessing in rural areas, he added.

The Collector directed the officials concerned to organise awareness camps with the cooperation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local social activists in schools and colleges. The officials were also directed to list out girls between the age group of 12 to 18 years in the purview of village secretariats and submit detail report at once.

District revenue officer Venkata Narayanamma, district educational officer Ganga Bhavani, ISDS PD Hena Sujana and others were present.