A female member of Ghana’s Parliament is calling on the Government to follow Kenya’s example by providing sanitary pads to needy female students free of charge as a way of encouraging school enrollment. Last week Kenya’s Finance Minister, Uhuru Kenyata, announced that primary school girls will now collect free sanitary towels from the government. Uhuru told Kenya’s Parliament in his 2011/2012 budget speech that 300 million shillings (Gh¢5,090,603.08) has been allocated to the Ministry of Education towards this initiative in a country where an average girl in Northern Kenya loses more than a month of lessons in a school year. Uhuru also appealed to NGOs to get involved in the cause to ensure that the girl child does not continue to miss vital school days monthly. Mrs. Elizabeth Agyeman of the Oforikrom Constituency told Citi News in an interview that emulating Kenya’s example would greatly improve on the number of girls enrolling in schools across the country. “We can also do our part. The little we can provide is enough. Sometimes you sit in your car and see school children passing by, some with blood behind them. They don’t have it and they don’t even know how to use the pad. So there is the need for us to support them and teach them how to use those pads. So it’s not bad. I will discuss this issue with the women caucus. “I think we can start it and tell the Speaker who is also a woman to forward a proposal to the Government so that we can also do something for the girls” she said. Meanwhile, the NPP Member of Parliament for Evalue Gwira Constituency, Catherine Afeku, said any government intervention to further push up girl child school enrollment should go beyond the provision of sanitary towels for needy female students. “What I want to emphasise is that, when it comes to the girl-child enrollment in Ghana, we have made strides. The second point is that the awareness campaign amongst the girls in our culture is a little bit higher than what we notice in Kenya. We can introduce sanitary towels in schools but it will not be the main reason for stopping our enrolment challenges. For us, it is the educational opportunities, the socio-cultural practices which almost disallow girls from going to school. That is where the canker is because if you are not even allowed to enter the school, sanitary towel does not come in as an issue” she explained. “So I see the fight more at the institutional level where parents of girls are being brought to the level where we are being told it is okay for your daughter to go to school. We need to fight that battle here and then the enhancement of sanitary towel could just be an added value. “I think if you go to our villages, enrolment is going higher, but we can focus resources in beefing up the campaign that it is okay for young girls to aspire to greater heights. So if you see that enrolment has reached the level where it is 60-80% then Government intervention in sanitary towels will be useful” she noted. Source: Citifmonline