By KELVIN MUDENDA –

THE Media Network on Child Rights and Development (MNCRD) has called for the empowerment of girls to safeguard their future.
MNCRD programmes manager Prisca Sikana said that there was need to empower Zambian girls and sensitise them on their rights for them to excel in future.
Ms Sikana said in an interview that Society had lost its moral fibre and the girl child was not safe.
Ms Sikana said the recent media reports of girls being defiled by their relatives and pastors was a sign that society had lost its moral fibre as well as the respect for each other and the fear of God.
She said it was a sad development that the young girls who were supposed to be protected by society had become victims of defilement and rape in a country that promotes Christianity.
“It is a sad development for our girls and you know as a country each and every day we keep fighting these vices against girls who are usually vulnerable because you realise that most of the people that do that to the girls are people that are close to them, usually pastors and uncles,” she said.
Ms Sikana, who is a Child rights activist, has called on the Government to increase allocation to the child protection unit.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old junior reporter at MNCRD, Natasha Mwansa, said it was wrong for society to take advantage of young girls just because they were too young to make informed decisions.
Ms Mwansa said young girls needed to be empowered in order for them to distinguish between what was right and wrong.
She called on young girls to take a firm stance in saying no to wrong doing or risk putting their lives in danger.