3 months ago
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Hands of Gold Foundation, an Accra based Non-governmental Organisation (NGO), has presented quantities of sanitary pads and educational materials to students in Labone and Accra Girls Senior High Schools.
The donation of the items forms part of the foundation’s Get a Pad, Get educated, Get a life (3G) project launched last year.
As part of the 3G project, the foundation aims to provide about 30,000 school girls in underprivileged communities across the country with monthly supply of sanitary pads to cater for their monthly flows.
In addition, the beneficiaries are to be provided with menstrual hygiene education and its associated management practices, and regular free health screening in addition to free books and stationery.
Presenting the items to the girls, a board member of HOG, Mr Larry George Botchwey, said despite the extensive education, action and advocacy done in this space, about 53 per cent of adolescent girls in some underserved and marginalised communities still found it difficult to afford sanitary pads.
This, he said, was due largely to the high cost of sanitary pads in the country which had been occasioned by the high taxes on the production and import of sanitary wares, especially sanitary pads.
Mr Botchwey stated that the donation was to make sanitary pads accessible to all, especially girls in underprivileged communities as a compliment of the other aspects of education needs being catered for by government.
He added that it was important that the girl child was retained in school and one of the surest ways of achieving this was for the government to ensure that sanitary pad was affordable in the country.
“I therefore appeal to our government to meaningfully reduce or completely remove the 12.5 per cent VAT and 20 per cent luxury tax on sanitary products,” he added.
He also encouraged parents and teachers specially to make the conversation on menstrual hygiene education a regular one in individual homes and schools.
Mr Botchwey also appealed to government and its affiliate organisations to come up with well-structured programmes and policies that would support corporate institutions and private individuals with innovative ways of producing low-cost, biodegradable and reusable sanitary products in order to ease the financial burden menstruating women faced.
The Headmistress of Labone Senior High School, Mrs Rejoice Acolor, whose school was the first to receive the package expressed her gratitude to HOG for the support.
She said it was unfortunate that many people often discounted the importance of menstrual hygiene in the education of the girl child, stressing that some of the students absent themselves from school during that period of the month largely because they were unable to afford sanitary pads.
Mrs Acolor noted that the items would go a long way to help boost the confidence of the girls and also enable them concentrate on their academics.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
