The National Youth Council of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Chairperson Bernice Cudjoe has reiterated the call on the government to remove taxes on sanitary pads to make them affordable for vulnerable girls and women.

Bernice Cudjoe made the call during a sanitary pad donation exercise to some five basic schools in the Volta Region on Wednesday,16, October 2024.

She bemoaned the high cost of sanitary pads, saying it makes it difficult for parents to provide them for their adolescent daughters, which in turn affects their world's academic achievements.

"We realized that sanitary pads have become a bit expensive and with most students in these regions, whenever it's that time of the month they find it difficult to be in school because they cannot afford the pads so they tend to stay away from school and everything so we have decided as an initiative to share sanitary pads to our sisters or the girl child in these five schools in the Volta Region and we hope that going forward we could do same in the other regions," she said.

Bernice further explains that the donation exercise was done to alleviate the burden some parents bear in providing the pads for their daughters in commemoration of International Youth Day, which was observed in August this year.

TUC had its congress in August, hence they observed the day on 16th October in the Volta Region.

The team donated 1,208 pads to a total of 308 adolescent girls in five schools in Ho; A.M.E Zion JHS, Ho Bankoe RC Girls, Ho Anglican JHS, The Grace Salvation Army School Complex and Nuriya Islamic Basic School with each girl receiving about 5 packs of sanitary pads.

In an interview with one of the students at AME Zion Basic School, Humali Sussy said, "During our menses, If we don't wear pads, we don't sit comfortably in class and sometimes even the pads we wear don't serve us well so our minds are on how are we going to make sure that we don't soil our uniforms and whenever we are not wearing pads, we go home early and that makes us lose the rest of the lessons. These pads are going to help us a lot as students".

Tsewu Bernice the Girls' School-based Facilitator at Anglican added that "most of the time when the girls menstruate, they remain at home for the number of days they menstruate before they come back to school so the donation will help them to remain in school for the few months that they have these pads so that they can learn, we are very grateful."

The head teacher of Grace Salvation Army basic school, Stephen Gordor said "The donation of the sanitary towels has a ripple effect on the ability of the learners to study a lot of them stay away from school until their period is over but this will go a long way to give them the comfort and confidence to still be among their peers. We assure you that they will use it as it is expected".