CSO petitions Parliament over suspended UCU pregnant students

Students Suspended over premarital sex find hope: A Civil Society Organisation (CSO) has petitioned Parliament’s committee on education and sports over the suspension of pregnant girls from  a college affiliated to Uganda Christian University, Mukono.

Administrators at Bishop Barham University College last week suspended girls who were found pregnant during a random test at the college.

“The university policy provides that unmarried girls who get pregnant automatically suspend themselves,” Reuben Twinomujuni, Public Relations Officer was quoted in a story published by New Vision on Saturday 26th April.

“Our policy here is that you came to study but not to get pregnant. We look at our students as our daughters and sons, so when someone gets pregnant it is a bad example to the rest especially to an institution that is founded on religion,” he said.

Twinomujuni said that when girls give birth or officially marry, they are allowed to sit for their examinations.  “If the man who impregnated the girl weds her, we allow her back but she cannot stay in the halls of residence because she is a married woman,” he added.

In the petition, the Uganda National Health Users/ Consumer’s Organisation (UNHCO), a coalition of 30 civil society health rights non-government organisation under their umbrella Voices for Health Rights (VHR) called for the review of the policy which they termed discriminatory