EASTERN PROVINCE

BUGESERA—A clergy from the Seventh Day Adventist Church has said family-planning is viewed as a sin, but failing to practice family-planning was a "grave sin,” in what is being seen as a major step on the part of religious institutions in the country to fall in live with government social policy.

"I have been keenly following up the family planning issue for long and discussed it with the Christians,” Pastor Celestin Butera says.

"The sin is not only in family-planning, but when a woman conceives against her will because she already has enough burden, it is a sin. Failing to educate the child to the level he wants because of big burden is also a sin.” He added that disagreements at home cropping from an oversized family was a sin in itself.

"For my fellow clergy who still perceive family planning as a sin, its high time to change your attitude because failing to practice family planning is a recipe for more sins,” the Butera said, speaking at a one-day consultative meeting on population explosion organised by members of the house of deputies.

The meeting brought together opinion leaders, local and women leaders, heads of schools, and heads of health centres.

Pastor Emanuel Serukundo of the Presbyterian Church dismissed the perception that religious leaders were against family planning, but rather attributed the low profile of the matter to scanty knowledge about the various family-planning methods.

For Pastor Habimana, his biggest concerned is that the government has not put in place rigid enough measures to check growing levels of prostitution in the country.

"Prostitutes contribute reasonably to the problem of population increase,” he said.

In what seems like a clash, women participants blame men for failing family-planning by producing outside wedlock, while men claim that young wives wish on their own to produce many children.

Deputy Samaire cautioned men against adultery and polygamy, saying the time for marrying more than one wife was out of date.

He noted that there were isolated cases where women foiled family-planning campaigns, though consensus is that most of the blame falls on men.

The meeting was also attended by the vice-mayor in charge of social affairs Isabella Mucyowera. Mucyowera, who appealed to leaders to be exemplary in having small, ‘manageable’ families in order to influence others in the community.

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