Brewery launches drive to fight under-age drinking in schools

Thu, 24 Nov 2016 11:54:11 +0000

ZAMBIAN Breweries has rolled out a campaign to discourage under-age drinking in schools because of its negative effects among the youth.

The company continued its drive at Kabulonga Boys Secondary School in Lusaka last week where Zambian Breweries representative Allan Bwalya said secondary schools were being particularly targeted for the information programme.

“We are rolling out our campaign against under-age drinking in secondary schools because this is the age at which young people start engaging in beer drinking.

“We want to remind pupils that beer is for adults and there is an age limit to it. We are also educating the pupils on the effects of under-age drinking and pointing out that they should wait until they complete school,” he said.

Zambian Breweries was working with the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) which has donated 100 copies of the Highway Code to the school.

Kabulonga Boys School headmaster Lloyd Yamboto welcomed the Zambian Breweries campaign and said that underage drinking was a countrywide problem.

“The problem contributes to the huge number of disciplinary cases we handle. Some pupils start drinking alcohol from their homes and then come to school.

On average, in a month we handle about 10 cases in school but there could be others outside school. In such cases, we call their parents and counsel them. The parents are quite supportive through the PTA (Parent Teachers’ Association) and share ideas on how to address such issues,” he said.

He said the Zambian Breweries campaign was coming at just the right time and would help the school a great deal in educating the pupils on the dangers of under-age drinking.

He thanked the company for the programme, describing it as beneficial and a good way to keep the pupils away from beer drinking.

The company has targeted to address 5,000 pupils for the whole year, and has managed to reach 1,100 during the Kabulonga Boys campaign.