PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is set to legislate to table bills for women and child rights, especially against domestic violence, child marriage, women trafficking and acid attacks, in the provincial assembly soon.

Bills for the purpose are almost ready and will be tabled in the provincial assembly shortly, special assistant to the provincial chief minister on social welfare Dr Mehr Taj Roghani told a seminar here on Tuesday.The seminar was organised to disseminate findings of a study on `advocating for improved maternal neonatal health and sexual and reproductive health policy and practices for adolescent girls and young mothers` Rehnuma Family Planning Association of Pakistan and Care International jointly organised the event, where current and former MPAs, health professionals, social activists and journalists showed up in large numbers.

Dr Mehr Taj expressed concern over high school dropouts in the province, especially among girls, and said the government had decided to pay monthly stipend of Rs500 to schoolgirls after fifth grade to encourage them to continue studies.

She said the government had to face resistance from certain quarters on the proposed amendments to the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, for enhanc-ing permissible age for a girl`s marriage, so it was trying to develop consensus on the matter before tabling a bill on it in the provincial assembly.

The special assistant regretted that the family planning programmes had failed to achieve the desired results and they had to go to grassroots for creating public awareness, especially among the poor people, of the harms of overpopulation.

She proposed that religious scholars be taken on board on the issue, which was still considered a taboo in large part of the society.

Rahnuma regional director Gohar Zaman and vice president Haji Sattar Gul said the rate of child marriages was higher in rural areas than urban centres.

They called for better media role to improve MNH and SRH policies for adolescents.

Senior health researcher Dr N Rehan presented a review of sexual and repro-ductive health (SRH) and maternal neonatal health (MNH) data and research compiled in the country between 2001 and 2011.

He said in 2011, the population of Pakistan was 177.1 million and of it, 38 million (21.4 per cent) were adolescent (between 15 to 24 years of age).

Dr N Rehan said according to Unesco, the literacy rate for adolescents in 2010 was 79 per cent for male and 51 per cent for females.

He said as in many Islamic societies, issues concerning sex, including sexually transmitted infections, were seen as taboos, so people didn`t discuss them openly.

The researcher said in Pakistan, abortion remained a controversial issue due to social, cultural and religious factors, which often translated into discrimination against women.

He said the most common reason forinduced abortion was completed family size (44.1 per cent), followed by premarital/ extramarital affairs (25.1 per cent) financial constraints (21.9 per cent), contraceptive failure (3.7 per cent) and domestic violence (0.2 per cent).

He added that nearly half of the abortions (49 per cent) were conducted by unskilled operators.

Another health sector researcher, Dr Ahsan Ahmad, presented study on `understanding maternal, neonatal, SRH of adolescent girls and young mothers (AGYM) for advocacy in Pakistan`, which was conducted in four cities, one in each province.He said one of the identified key preventive reproductive health needs of AGYM was knowledge about menstruation as there was general lack of awareness about menstrual health problems and appropriate sources to seek care among both married and unmarried girls.

`Low levels of awareness giving (aboutphysiological and reproductive health changes) to adolescent girls at the household and community level was prevalent and understood to be one of the main inhibiting factors towards appropriate knowledge of AGYM,` Dr Ahsan said .

Director adolescent of the AIMS Project Amna Aksheed said her project was focused on identifying the SRH needs of AGYM in Pakistan and highlighting the issue pertaining to access and utilisation of services according to the needs.

She highlighted the achievements in the previous phase of the project, saying resolutions were presented in three of the provincial assemblies and was passed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly last year asking government departments to include adolescents as specific target groups in all plans and programmes with due attention on their sexual and reproductive health.