1,000 teens impregnated by road workers in Soroti

Road constructors who recently worked on infrastructure projects in Soroti, Kumi and Pallisa districts have been accused of impregnating at least 1,000 teenage girls in Kamuda sub-county, Soroti.

The ministry of Internal Affairs deputy coordinator in trafficking in persons department said Monday that there has been improvement in the state of the roads in the eastern Ugandan districts, but while the construction was ongoing, the Ugandan and Chinese constructors engaged in unprotected sex with many girls in the area which has led to many children born being unaccounted for.

According to Igoye, the people that are responsible for the young mothers in the areas include both Ugandan and Chinese constructors under Arab Contractors (Osman Ahmed Osman & Co) who have been working on the roads in the districts.

“If you know a relative, a clansman or whoever constructed those roads, please let them crosscheck, let them do some DNA because they have so many children who are unaccounted for and no one is there to take care of them. When we reached Soroti, in Kamuda sub-county alone, there were over 1,000 children who were pregnant and these were the ones that were seen visiting the health centres. You can imagine how many have not visited and how many have had abortions,” said Igoye.

Some of the roads in the area, Tirinyi-Paliisa-Kumi and Paliisa-Kamonkoli roads which are still ongoing are under Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA).

Allan Ssempebwa, UNRA spokesperson says that such matters were initially never considered important by UNRA until they became exposed. He adds that a social protection plan was implemented to protect the workers of UNRA together with training of workers to handle such incidents and that culprits of such acts are always put before the law.

This article originally appears in The Observer