Gov’t secures loan to buy sanitary pads for school girls

Government has secured a World Bank loan, part of which will be used to provide free sanitary pads for school girls.
Parliament approved a $156million World Bank facility to support construction of Senior High Schools in the country. Of this, around $15million will go into scholarships for over 10,000 students to pursue a senior high school education.
Part of the $15 million will be used to buy sanitary pads and distribute them free of charge to school girls.
The policy is in fulfillment of an NDC campaign promise, the Minister of Education, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang stated.
Ms Agyemang added that the decision to supply sanitary pads to less privileged students under a scholarship scheme in the Ghana Secondary School improvement programme is aimed at encouraging them to stay in school.
“The girls 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 it 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 pads.
“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 things?, Prof Fobih suggested.
“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.