Women’s rights groups have been lately putting all the efforts to make President John Magufuli apologize and reverse his statement on expulsion of pregnant schoolgirls from educational institutions.
Addressing to a rally on Monday in Chalinze town the president said as per 2002 law the pregnant schoolgirls could be asked to leave the school under offences against morality and wedlock ground.
However, in recent years the women’s rights groups have been urging his government to change the existing law in favor of the pregnant schoolgirls so that they can continue their studies.
Chalinze town is about 100km west of Dar es Salaam.
Magufuli said pregnant schoolgirls or young mothers could be a distraction for others if allowed to sit in class.
He said, “She’d be asking the teacher… Let me go out and breastfeed my crying baby.”
He also added the men who make schoolgirls pregnant will get 30 years of imprisonment and while serving the jail term their energy will be used into farming.
A lady with similar suffering during her teenage recollected her story saying a boy had promised to pay her secondary school fees if she agreed to be with him.
Jackie Leonard Lomboma now has a 15-year-old daughter Rose and she runs a centre for teenage mothers in Morogoro.
Lomboma added she never had dated the boy and got pregnant in her first meeting with him and now she is disappointed with the latest statement of the president as education can only help in paving the road out of poverty in the country.