The Parliamentary portfolio committee on health and child care is pushing to reduce the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12.
Some members of the portfolio committee on Health and Child Care over the weekend where suggesting the age limit to be reduced to 12 triggering a massive verbal battle from women rights activists who are actually lobbying for the age to be pushed to 18.
Registering her dismay on her official Twitter handle, United Kingdom based Zimbabwean UK based girl child rights activist Betty Makoni said members of this committee must be added on the sanctions list.
“This committee must be added to the targeted sanctions list with immediate effect. They must be barred from working with children. The committee must be renamed Child Protection and Safeguard.
“ This is the most dangerous thing to happen to Zimbabwean children. Zero Tolerance to this” she tweeted.
According to statistics in Zimbabwe one child is raped every three hours and majority of them are between the age of seven and fifteen. Therefore reducing the consent age to twelve, the parliament of Zimbabwe will risk the lives of many children and give room for a lot of rape cases to go unreported.
Members of the public took it to social media expressing their anger on the move some describing the current age limit of sixteen as to young to be sexual aware.
” It’s sad, even animals respect their queens, I have a daughter who is turning 12 in May, she is just a child, an innocent being, even 16 is rape according to me!”
Other people suggested that pressure should be put on those MPs so that they withdraw the push. Advocating such will take the country back to dark age.