The Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has called on the government to provide free sanitary pads to all basic and senior high school girls and subsidise the cost for tertiary institution students.
This call comes after the Eastern Regional chapter of the GBA discovered that some individuals are exploiting the high cost of sanitary pads to manipulate and sexually exploit vulnerable school girls who cannot afford them.
President of the Eastern Regional Ghana Bar Association, Francis Polly led a team to distribute over 800 free sanitary pads to seven deprived basic schools in Koforidua.
He emphasised that the association will continue to donate sanitary pads to schools. He urged the government to make them freely available to girls in primary and Junior high schools and subsidised for senior high school students.
“This is from the bar Councillors service, at our last meeting we resolved that we spend and celebrate Father’s Day by donating sanitary pads to female schools. We chose seven schools within Koforidua and this is the third school we visited, tomorrow we will continue.
“We realised that the pads are now very expensive and the girls and parents cannot afford them and some unscrupulous young men are taking advantage of that, promising the girls that they will get them money to buy pads and take advantage of those girls so we thought we would set the pace by doing donations.”
“This is not the first we are doing it we are going to continue and then do more. They should hurry up and even make sanitary pads free for girls in the primary and the JHS level, they should make it free for them and then subsidised for those in SHS. The government should distribute it to them monthly basis for free.”
Mr Polly warned that failing to provide sanitary pads puts girls at risk of health hazards and exploitation by predatory individuals, adding that parents should also support their daughters by providing them with sanitary pads regularly.
CitiNewsroom
