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Jakarta Post

Early marriage in NTB exacerbates health, poverty problems

More than 40,000 couples from 1

Panca Nugraha (The Jakarta Post)
Mataram
Fri, June 26, 2015

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Early marriage in NTB exacerbates health, poverty problems

M

ore than 40,000 couples from 1.5 million families in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) got married at below 20 years old, contributing to problems with poverty and mental and reproductive health in the province.

'€œAlthough they are not the main cause of the high number of underprivileged families, getting married at an early age has many not-so-positive effects. It impacts on mental, emotional and reproductive health as well as economic opportunity,'€ NTB National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) head Virginia Anggraeni told The Jakarta Post in Mataram on Thursday.

Virginia said the couples who had married young were among NTB'€™s 384,000 families that were categorized as underprivileged, based on data from 2014 released by the NTB BKKBN.

The same data also stated that more than 183,000 household heads in NTB were unemployed.

Virginia estimated the number of underprivileged families in NTB in 2015 had increased from last year'€™s figure. This, she said, was partly attributable to the early marriage rate , which remains high.

She said that an underprivileged family was one that could not afford to meet six basic family needs, which include eating twice a day or more, owning different clothing for home, work and school and living in a house complete with roof, proper floors and walls.

Virginia said that in 2014, NTB Governor Muhammad Zainul Majdi had issued a circular on ideal marriage age in the province, in which he recommended that marriage be for couples over 21 years old.

'€œWe, together with the provincial administration, the Family Welfare Movement [PKK] and other relevant agencies are promoting and encouraging this mature marriage age in the community,'€ said Virginia.

Besides encouraging the community to curtail the early marriage trend, the NTB BKKBN has also persuaded the couples to participate in family planning to curb the rapid pace of population growth in NTB.

The governor'€™s circular could be considered progressive after the recent decision by the Constitutional Court (MK) that upheld 16 years as the minimum age for marriage for women, as stated in Article 7 of the Marriage Law.

The court said that there was no guarantee that if the age requirement was increased to 18, as demanded by petitioners, it would reduce divorce rates and solve health and social problems.

The petitioners, the Women'€™s Health Foundation and a coalition of five concerned women and children'€™s rights activists and organizations, were disappointed with the ruling, arguing that women under 18 years old were still children.

Meanwhile, NTB BKKBN Advocacy and Information Affairs head Setya Budi Irianta said the family planning program in NTB should be further pushed, as the total fertility rate in the province remained high at 2.8 children per woman compared to the national rate of 2.6.

This year, NTB BKKBN has targeted around 114,000 new family planning participants, and had recorded data from more than 58 percent of them at the end of May this year.

'€œIn 2014, 193 new family planning participants were listed, bringing the total active participants to 802,000. This year, we are optimistic the target of 114,000 new family planning participants can be achieved,'€ said Setya.

The high birthrate in NTB is despite the inability of many families to guarantee that all their children'€™s basic needs are met.

Data from the NTB Social, Population and Civil Registration Office, released by the NTB Central Statistics Agency showed that in 2013 more than 120,000 children were categorized as neglected, 9,500 of them toddlers.

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