Stakeholders have attributed the high teenage pregnancies in Budaka District to poor parenting, poverty, unhealthy social cultural values, lack of knowledge about the laws, advanced technologies and poor communication between parents and adolescents, which calls for collective efforts from all individuals to address the matter.The concerns were raised this morning during the teenage pregnancy surveillance and response meeting held in the District Council Chambers with a team from MOH, aimed at providing accountability platform for teenage pregnancies in the District.Speaking during in the meeting, Ms. Muganzi Julian, the Senior Probation and Welfare Officer informed members that Budaka District stands at 22% in terms of Teenage Pregnancies as compared to 25% at National level.She emphasized the issue of Government and stakeholders strengthening the social economic targeted initiatives beyong YLP and PDM.She called for continued community engagement through various structures to address so cial –cultural values and norms.According to Ms.Kanifa Mugala, the Senior Education Officer, she said that through collaboration with the implementing partners like Amref, HEROES for Gender Transformative Action, they have been able to arrest culprits of Sexual Gender Based Violence, they have gone ahead to provide dashboards in schools that have been used to track pupils enrolment in schools among others.The District Chairperson, Mr.Pajje Emmanuel advocated for the religious leaders to be brought on board in the fight against teenage pregnancies.“Some religious believes are also a contributing factor to the teenage pregnancies ,”Mr.Pajje Said.He then appreciated the Judiciary for the good work done and called for team work from all the stakeholders to address issues of teenage pregnancies.Mr.Hamwada Ismael Pinto,the RDC Budaka called for respect and protection of both the girls and boys dignity.He called for mainstreaming of VHTs roles with issues of Community Development Officers utilizing the vailable opportunities to ensure that information reaches to communities among others.Among the stakeholders in the meeting included the political leaders, district technical staff, some CDOs, subcounty leaders and police excetra.