UWOPA, don’t lament, push for sanitary law
The token demand by women activists for supply of the all-essential sanitary towels to schoolgirls should stop.
This repeat call, coming at a conference organised by the Gender ministry and hosted by UWOPA during the International Women’s Day, celebrated on Monday, now passes for ceremonial call that yields no outcome.
The revelation by Ms Sumaya Nakalyango of St Aloysius Vocational Secondary School in Rakai District that many of our girls are used by men who offer them support during menstrual periods, is nothing new. The women activists, Gender ministry and UWOPA are all aware of the ills.
Furthermore, the 2012 Menstrual Hygiene Management survey had warned that six of 10 of our girls miss school for half a week every month during their menses because of fear of shame and lack of facilities to support them at school.
This stress is so bad that the few days of absences per month build into eight days of study in a school term and leaving school completely, according to the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and the International Water and Sanitation Centre that authored the report.
This would mean our girls, who are often pressured by domestic work, will not catch up on classwork, but post poor grades and fail to compete favourably with the boys to realise their full potential and advancement.
So for UWOPA, when Education minister Janet Museveni said there was no money to meet President Museveni’s pledge, it was up to our women MPs, to push this agenda to squeeze a budget to fulfil the demand through more than five Budget sequences since 2016.
It was within UWOPA’s mandate to swing their 180 plus numerical weight to win this bargain. Had they strenuously pushed this demand, it is likely the male MPs would have fallen in line to push this noble cause and cast off the shame of seeing our daughters skip school due the burden of menses.
Even now, all that UWOPA needs to do is to force government to act because the State has a duty to ensure every Ugandan has a right to education, and our girls’ rights must be prioritised as enshrined in Article 30 of the Constitution.
What is more, our schoolgirls have rights to claim in this issue as Article 33(2) tasks government “to provide the facilities and opportunities necessary to enhance the welfare of women to enable them realise their full potential and advancement.”
In sum, education is our girls’ best bet to that goal, and lack of sanitary towels must not stand in their way to achieve that.
