Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has once again being reminded of fulfilling his 2020 campaign pledge of pushing government to scrap taxes on sanitary pads if voted into power.
The Vice President has said that the elimination of the 20 percent luxury tax on imported sanitary products will help “improve health conditions, particularly for girls.”
Three years on, after several calls made have yielded no results, charitable organization, Thriving Women Foundation is asking the Vice President to honor his pledge.
This call comes weeks after advocacy group, the Orange Girl Foundation in a press release urged the Vice President to ensure the scraping of the taxes as promised.
Speaking on Spotlight on MX24 Television, Co-Founder of the Thriving Women Foundation, Edith-Casely Fordjoe said the government has nothing to lose if they scrap the taxes.
“We’ve seen a lot of people trying to remind him of his promise and I’m once again appealing to the vice president of Ghana to once again, honor his promise to scrap the tax. There is nothing to lose by making periods more affordable, more assessable and safer for your girls,” she indicated
She further urged the government to find innovative and creative ways in mobilizing revenue which does not involve “arbitrarily punish young girls who are menstruating.”
“You cannot put value on human life, and attempting to put an economic price on girl’s safety and dignity when they are menstruating is wrong. For the government to find ways of raising money, they can get creative. We have tax experts in this country, we have economic wizkids in this country. They can find more creative ways to mobilize resources that does not put a price,” she told Adwoa Tenkoramaa on Spotlight.
Meanwhile, Samiha Yunus, Founder of the Ilmiha Labs, a social research lab called on businesses, hotels and other corporate offices to adopt the practice to keeping sanitary pads in their washrooms to improve access as part of the collective effort in tackling the menace.
“It takes a collective effort, everybody needs to be on board, even at work places, media houses, I should walk into a washroom and have sanitary pad. These are little practices that can help you. If you are in an environment where you don’t have access to sanitary pads and if you do not have money on you to buy sanitary pad, at least you know if I walk into this washroom, I should find something, even in hotels,” she stated.
Watch the full episode of Spotlight below:
