Kitgum girls to benefit from sanitary pads

Dec 17, 2019

Lamwaka, who is a retired primary school headteacher, said she witnessed girls dropping out of school immediately they started seeing their periods.

                                     

GIRL CHILD EDUCATION             

Parliament has resolved to establish regional factories to manufacture sanitary pads in a bid to combat the high school dropout rate by girls.

Kitgum Woman MP Margaret Lamwaka Odwar, said parliamentarians agreed that instead of exporting all the cotton produced in the country, some should be used locally to make pads.
 
Speaking to journalists in Kitgum on Tuesday, Lamwak said the MPs in the plenary session two weeks ago recommended that the ministries of education and health, as well as the Office of the President, work hand-in-hand to ensure the factories are established.
 
"They are to ensure that the Government establishes factories that produce pads in every region. The Government can buy and distribute some of them in schools. The rest can be sold at low prices in open markets," Lamwaka said.
 
She was speaking to the media shortly after the launch of the training of ‘seed trainers' (trainers of trainees) in the Resident District Commissioner's (RDC) boardroom on Tuesday. The training was launched by the District Internal Security Officer (DISO), Lawrence Assimwe, who stood in for the RDC.
 
The 10 ‘seed trainers' chosen from each sub-county will be trained in making sanitary pads. They will then impart the similar skills to other girls in the district.
 
The training was conducted by Love Binti International, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), with funding from the Taiwan government. Lamwaka, who lobbied the NGO, said the training would target girls in schools, churches and other institutions.
 
Excel Kafeero Swalle, the project manager, said Love Binti International would provide the materials needed to train the girls for six-months. He said they would be taught to identify and make pads from local, affordable and easily available materials.
 
"They do not have to  buy special materials. They can use their cotton t-shirtS and bedsheets," he said.
 
Kafeero said their target is to reach 1m girls countrywide, who have suffered menstrual stigma to the extent of dropping out of school.
 
"The beauty of our project is that we do not make and give out pads. We teach the girls to make them themselves so that even when we leave, they can still make their own," he said.
 
Kafeero said the pads can be washed and reused at least three times, meaning a girl only needs a minimum of four sanitary pads to last her a whole year.
 
Lamwaka, who is a retired primary school headteacher, said she witnessed girls dropping out of school immediately they started seeing their periods. She added that once menstrual blood accidentally stained their clothes, boys would begin teasing them, which would affect their performance in class, forcing them to quit school.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});