Government Procures Loan To Fund Free Sanitary Pads For School Girls

Government has procured a World Bank loan, part of which would be used to provide free sanitary pads for school girls.

Parliament yesterday approved a 156 million dollar World Bank facility to support construction of Senior High Schools in the country and out of the money an amount of 15 million dollars will go into scholarship for over ten thousand students to pursue senior high education.

Part of that amount would also be used to buy sanitary pads and distribute it free of charge to school girls.

The policy is in fulfillment of an NDC campaign promise Minister of Education Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang stated.

She said the issue must be treated with the urgency it deserved.

She added that the decision to supply sanitary pads to some less privileged students under a scholarship scheme in the Ghana Secondary School improvement programme is aimed at encouraging them to stay in school.

“The girl seem to be in school up to about class three and four and they begin to drop [out]. A lot of theories have been expounded as to why this is happening. So the issue of girl’s sanitation is not a laughing matter. It’s a very serious issue,” she explained.

She admonished all to support the policy and “handle it with the sensitivity that is required.”

But the Minority spokesperson on education Professor Dominic Fobih and the MP for Weija Gbawe Rosemary Abrah Comfort are questioning the allocation for the sanitary pad.

“I still feel strongly that taking loans to buy sanitary pads, rulers, pens and pencils is out of place.

“Why can’t we use our own budget to buy such a thing?” Fobih suggested.

“A lot of items in this that people will not take us serious. Going to borrow money and look at what we are going to use the money for. Sanitary pads? We must be serious” Rosemary Abrah Comfort chided.