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Youth advocates have asked the government to implement a tax waiver on sanitary pads.

“The price of a sanitary pad is still incredibly high for the adolescent girl and young woman in rural areas,” Emojel Trevor, who is the country youth coordinator, of Uganda Cares, said.

Marian Jessica who is a youth advocate at AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Uganda Cares said often some girls in rural areas drop out of school because of a lack of sanitary pads. Others are lured into sexual relationships and have ended up becoming pregnant.

Marian implored the government to provide free sanitary pads and have them dispensed at strategic points where vulnerable girls can access them.

Alternatively, the government can subsidize the prices of sanitary pads and make them affordable for poor rural girls and young women.    

This was during the fireplace conversation to validate the draft of the state of the youth report. The fireplace meeting organized by the Youth Parliamentary Forum together with Uganda Cares at Grand Global Hotel on Friday enabled the youth to discuss issues regarding employment and livelihood, health education, youth participation, decision-making, and climate change.

Emojel said the level of comprehensive sexual reproductive health services among young people is less than 50%, there is a need to prioritize the SRH services to curtail SRH-related illnesses increase knowledge on contraceptive use, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.

He also condemned the spike in new HIV infections among young people.

The JAR report 2022/23 also shows that adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) bear the burden of new HIV infections, consequently, contributing 36% of new infections in adults aged 15 to 49 years.

This translates into about 18,546 new HIV infections that happened among adolescent girls aged between 15 to 24.

The discussion also rotated around the bills that the Uganda Parliamentary forum is working on especially the national graduate service scheme bill which aims at removing the mismatch of what is taught in school and what is at the workplace.

The other was the start-up bill that looks at supporting young people to access credit or to be given tax holidays.

“We want the young people to get these incentives so that they can be able to sustain their businesses for more than a year given the challenge that when the businesses start they do not see their first birthday,” aid Osborn Kyehabure, a member of the youth parliamentary forum

The State of the Youth report is presented every year to review the NRM government promises as to whether they have been fulfilled, the gaps, and the way forward.