Remove tax on sanitary pads – Girl Guides

The Ghana Girl Guides Association has appealed to government to remove the tax on sanitary pads.

According to the Chief Commissioner of the Ghana Girl Guides Association Zakiya Abdul Wahab, some girls living in rural areas find it difficult to eat a three-square meal daily as a result of financial difficulties not to talk of purchasing sanitary pads during their menstrual periods.

Ms Wahab made the appeal when the association presented sanitary pads to some selected Junior and Senior High Schools in the Ga North Municipal Assembly in the Greater Accra Region.

Speaking to Class News on the development Ms Wahab said: “Our main concern is on the tax on sanitary pads to be removed. As to whether it will be pushed to Alcohol or something else, I think it is for the government to decide.

“Initially, we spoke about alcohol because we know it’s going to make it expensive and make it difficult for young people to get access to it easily but, honestly, that is not for us to decide. Our main concern is for the removal of the tax."

“The sanitary pad has been classified currently as a luxury item and looking at the situation of menstruation, I don’t think it’s anybody’s doing, it’s how women have been created. So, from age nine, nowadays, you can get girls menstruating that early to 40 years and above."

"It is something that we go through on a monthly basis and you can’t consider something like that as luxury knowing that it is sanitary pads that we use mainly during this period to manage ourselves.”