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Anatalón Okué Oyono (afrol.com), 12 October - The lacking educational infrastructure, the deficiencies in the existing school system and the absence of an economic future causes the youngsters to fall into prostitution, were money can be made quickly. Alternatively, they give into excessive alcohol consumption, according to several reports from the Equatorial Guinean opposition. The Equatorial Guinean political opposition and the free press lately has addressed the worrying increase of prostitution and alcohol consume among school age juveniles in the country. Daniel Oyono, leader of the oppositional Unión de Demócratas Independientes (UDI), yesterday criticized the attitude of the Equatorial Guinean Government towards the youth and stated that it represented an "assault on the future of our country." In a statement to the Spanish news agency EFE, Oyono stated that "on educational matters, the policy of the Government of Equatorial Guinea, headed by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, equals its policy on health, constituting itself on destroying the future generations of the country." - It is evident, Oyono said, "that the regime, instead of promoting education, culture and sports, which could strengthen young Guineans, it abandons them to their own destiny," so that many of them "end up giving into excessive alcohol consumption out of pure desperation." He also pointed out that a big part of the girls between 15 and 20, suffering some kind of delay in their studies, "are able to pass their exams by giving sexual services or paying their teacher," in the state-owned secondary education institutions. The independent newspaper La Gaceta de Guinea Ecuatorial, for example, in one of its articles has urged the youth to find "strength to slow down this development, existing in all cultures," while it conducted a questionnaire among youths related to the increase in prostitution. The daily newspaper found out that, regrettably, the consulted youngster justified these actions when there was a "lack of necessary economic means to survive." According to the same newspaper, "sex has turned into the principal trade of the youth," and that the sex trade was something common "in the streets of our towns, as a topic of conversation - it's all over...". The responsible Minister of Education and Science, Santiago Ngua Nfumu, on the other hand, said in a telephone interview with EFE (from Malabo) that his ministry in no way was "institutionalizing prostitution," and that prostitution only was a consequence of "a human weakness". Ngua also revealed that, this year, the Government had spent more than 200.000 US$ establishing a new educational institution and for acquiring school materials. The minister, on the same occasion, informed that the Government equip the libraries with more than 15.000 new books and that it had distributed 30.000 textbooks and more than 10.000 encyclopedias to all the schools of the country. "We have distributed school materials to all the less favoured children during the month of May," Ngua explained, before admitting that one had not been able to cover all the needs, because "the number of students is increasing". Answering these claims, the opposition affirms that most of the schools in the country have to send the children home the last hours because there is no electricity. The crisis in the educational sector effects more than 80 percent of the population, living in poverty and without the means to send their children to foreign (especially Spanish) boarding schools, the opposition claims. The study plan in Equatorial Guinea still is based on the old, Spanish secondary-education plan. Equatorial Guinea gained its independence from Spain in 1968. Economic aid proceeding from the old colonial power only permits the
school enrollment of some 30 percent of the Equatorial Guinean kids, which
receive teaching in private institutions run by Spanish religious
organisations.
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