By REBECCA MUSHOTA –

GOVERNMENT and police have urged parents not to use demeaning names against their female children but instead encourage them to do well in life so as to help reduce cases of defilements.
Copperbelt Deputy Permanent Secretary Georgina Kasapatu said when she addressed parents and pupils in Kaloko on Tuesday that parents should not call their children names that were derogatory but instead encourage them as an effective way to mitigate cases of defilement.
The Ministry of Gender held a child rights sensitisation and awareness programme at Twalubuka Primary School grounds in Kaloko Township in Ndola.
The programme was aimed at sensitising children and parents on abuses like defilement to reduce child abuse cases in the area.
Kaloko Township has recorded a number of cases of abuse against children like defilement, including a popular case about three months ago of a 10-year-old girl who was defiled and impregnated.
Ms Kasapatu at the meeting said parents had an imp ortant duty to encourage their girl children to excel in education.
“Parents encourage your children to do well at school and do not refer to them as idiots. It is your duty both as mother and father to encourage your children to excel in education, please do not tell them that educated women do not get married.
“I am educated and it is because I am educated that I have this job, and yet I am married and have five children. Marriage is not a business opportunity but it is meant for friendship,” Ms Kasapatu said.
She told the girls at the meeting that educated girls were an asset to the country because they were able to support their households and their aging parents.
Earlier, Police chief inspector in the child protection unit Sara Kambeu cautioned parents against calling their children by derogatory terms like dog, monkey or imbecile.
Ms Kambeu said, amid cheers from the school pupils, that calling children by demeaning terms limited their goals in life and made it easier for criminals to lure them to harm.
It also amounted to emotional abuse which was a crime.
Children, she said, should be told that they were loved and should be shown concern by parents.
Ms Kambeu warned parents against encouraging their children to dress seductively so as to attract men and help bring income in the home.
Mothers should also avoid spending long hours at funerals at the expense of caring for their children and doing house chores which are done by the girl child in their absence.
Child protective unit chief inspector Pauline Brill told children not to accept lifts, gifts from strange men and to report any form of abuse to police immediately.