- Otjozondjupa governor James Uerikua says as much as the government has made strides in protecting the rights of women and girls, the rights of the boy child must not be forgotten.
The governor said this at a recent belated commemoration of International Women's Day held at Kalkfeld in the Otjozondjupa region.
The day is commemorated globally focusing on women's rights and gender equality, and contributions towards the country's socio-economic development.
Uerikua stressed that as much as society keeps on advocating the rights of women, the rights of girls and boys must also be on the agenda.
"But as much as we are talking about the girl child agenda, let us also not forget about the boy child," said the governor noting that the boy child must not be neglected as most of the country's prisons are full of men.
"So, there is a need that while we are focusing on women's rights advancement, let us also stop over and consider the boy child. Let us not neglect him," said Uerikua.
In addition, the governor also noted that as much as the boy child should not be neglected, women and girls remain the government's allies in development.
He said women and girls are the key stakeholders in a country's development agenda and there will never be full development without their participation.
"It is time we commit and recommit ourselves to support each other and pull in one direction towards full equality and women empowerment. Let's re-direct our projects and programmes towards empowering women. Let's relax conditions in such a way that when you are advertising positions, when you are making tenders available, they must centralise about preference being accorded to women," he said.
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Uerikua further encouraged the youth to be obedient and respectful to elders as children learn from their behaviour.
"We need to look into that from a societal point that we need to go back to our cultures and traditions of knowing what is wrong and what is not wrong," he said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister for Disability Affairs, Alexia Manombe-Ncube, at the same occasion spoke about the need to invest in women, girls, and the boy child.
"We need to invest in women and girls including the boy child for us as a nation to be able to accelerate progress in various areas of our society. Let us employ and implement the gender responsive planning and budgeting initiative in our institutional policies, programmes, and strategies," said the deputy minister.
Manombe-Ncube emphasised that gender budgeting promotes better utilisation of the country's financial resources by matching budgets to plans, priority programmes, and projects while ensuring that the needs of women and men, girls and boys are given due attention.
*Petrus Muronga is a media officer for MICT in the Otjozondjupa region. He can be reached at Petrus.Muronga@mict.gov.na
