The Ghana Commission for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has expressed worry over taxes imposed on sanitary pads.
The Commission said the increase in prices of sanitary pads is affecting enrolments and attendance in the various basic and secondary schools across the country.
Prices of the various sanitary pad brands range between GH¢10 and GH¢50 which is way out of budget for many teenagers.
Marking International Education Day under the theme “to invest in people, prioritize education,” the Commission appealed to the government to scrap all taxes imposed on sanitary products.
The Principal Programme Officer of the Commission, Moses Gemeh, told Citi News the government must take deliberate decisions to lower the price of sanitary pads to improve attendance.
“The issue of the lack of sanitary pads is a problem. There have been countless kinds of research that actually showed that many girls shun the classroom simply because they can’t afford sanitary pads, so there should be deliberate commitments by the government to actually seek to remove the taxes that make the prices of these sanitary pads very expensive for our young girls.”
“So once they realize they are in that cycle, they don’t go to school and this is affecting them so the only call that we can make is that government should at least remove the taxes on these sanitary pads so that our little girls can purchase them and go to school,” Mr. Gemeh added.
