NPC Urges Bayelsa To Establish 105 Registration Centres

The National Population Commission (NPC) on Thursday called on Bayelsa Government to partner with the commission to establish birth and death registration centres in its 105 wards.
Federal Commissioner for NPC in Bayelsa State,  Dr Austen Pabor, made the call during the celebration of the World Population Day in Yenagoa.
Pabor said Bayelsa had the least birth registration figures in the country, adding that he said the existing 26 centres were inadequate to capture the population growth rate in the state.
Pabor said that the NPC was constrained by lack of funds to open more centres beyond the 26 provided by the Federal Government.
He urged the state government to recruit or deploy staff to the proposed registration centres to ensure proper capture of population data.
“This will ensure an accurate population figure for the state,’’ he said.
On the theme for the day: “Teenage Pregnancy”, Pabor attributed the high incidence to acute poverty.
According to him, available data shows that teenage pregnancies occur more frequently in girls from poor backgrounds.
“About 95 per cent of almost all adolescent births occur in low and middle income countries. “Within countries, adolescent births are more likely to occur among the poor, less educated and the rural population,” he said.
Pabor said that in Bayelsa, one third of the population or 600,000 people were aged between 10 and 24 and attributed the situation to early marriage, early sexual exposure and poor sexual health services.