On My Humble Mind: President Mahama's Answer To Improving The Enrollment Of Girls In Senior High Schools - Sanitary Pads ?

When a government seeks to enhance the enrollment and /or retention of the Ghanaian child and more so the girl child in school, there is the need to applaud and encourage them.

However, President John Dramani Mahama's decision to supply free sanitary pads to girls in Senior High Schools has sent many Ghanaians waddling.

There are a plethora of challenges facing our Senior High School students requiring governmental interventions to enhance enrolment and retention, strangely enough, the supply of sanitary pads have been elevated by the NDC government as the most precarious and given the utmost priority.

It is of little surprise therefore that the decision have been received by many a Ghanaian as the most misplaced and ill conceived policy of any government any where in the civilized world.

It may be recalled that in the run up to the 2012 general elections, the Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, now the elected president, John Dramani Mahama led the NDC's campaign to ridicule the flagship fee free and quality education up to the Senior Secondary SchooI as the educational policy direction for Ghana by Nana Akufo Addo and the New Patriotic Party.

Pedestrian arguments were given against the New Patriotic Party's free SHS policy by President Mahama who incidentally is a beneficiary of free education, but surprisingly saw every thing wrong with providing fee free education to the Ghanaian child.

Part of President Mahama's argument was that parents were going to be seen as irresponsible if they (the parents) were not made to pay their words school fees.

This is in spite of the school fees component being the biggest line item on every student's bill. A fee free policy was and still is the best conceivable government intervention that will relieve the students who do not have wealthy parents to do so.

That policy would have put more money in the pockets of the female students to purchase other basics hygiene and privacy items such as sanitary pads.

A number of issues confront the girl child as she transverse the educational ladder. Physiological, peer pressure, biological and natural sequence of adolescence including a monthly flow of blood and other social phenomenon affect a girl's ability to complete an appreciable level of formal education comparable to her male counterpart.

In our male dominant society, females have been subjected to many centuries of undesirable conditions with its concomitant results for the entire society.

Any intervention seeking to unearth the potentials in the formal education training of the female must be far reaching rather than populist and surface scratching exercise intended to achieve parochial political interests.

The issue of providing sanitary pads by President Mahama to the female of Senior High Schools while maintaining the payment of school fees and other educational incidental cost is most besmirched.

Many socio cultural as well as religious practices in Ghana and Africa have always been to the detriment of the girl child. Until recently many families unfortunately saw the girl child education as a "waste" on the families' resources. The boys have always received preferential treatment when formal education were to be considered.

There are many advantages to be derived by the family and society and the focus is to have more quality formal education for the girls than the boys, or at best as the boy child.

Quality girls' education is one of the most powerful leverage points for breaking the generations-old, self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and solving many other challenging socio-economic problems.

The World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and other international organizations have all done extensive research on the broad social benefits of providing educational opportunity to especially the girl child.

Among the many advantages to be derived in educating girls are the fact that educated mothers are more than twice as likely to send their own children to school. A child born to a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5.

It has been established that girls with 7 years of education will marry an average of 4 years later and have fewer children, reducing economic and ecological pressure. A girl with an extra year of education typically earns 20% more as an adult.

In many of our towns and cities, many young girls are seen carrying loads of people for pittance. These are known as kayayes in the Ghanaian parlance. Others live with the more affluent in society as domestic servants. This unfortunate spectacles are mostly suffered by the uneducated and less privileged girls of our society.

The lack of educational opportunities have created an unenviable condition where young girls who sleep on the streets are exposed to challenges of thereof. Many become mothers at very tender ages. It is not uncommon to see young mothers with their babies strapped at their backs carrying heavy loads in our markets.

President Mahama's answer to this debilitating situation is disgraceful bizarre and there must be some underlining reasons for such a policy to even be contemplated.

The lame explanations being given by the government make the policy even more suspicious. A cabinet Minister has indicated that the policy is a conditional clause demanded by the World Bank for the loan facility of US $156 million.

If this is the case, then the sovereignty of our country is under serious threat. President Mahama and the NDC government must be stopped in their tracks. The acceptance of such a condition for a loan facility to be paid by the over taxed Ghanaian, show how insensitive and loss of focus the government has become.

This sanitary pad project is nothing other than an avenue to fleece the people of Ghana and line the pockets of President Mahama and his cohorts.

The president cannot wood winked Ghanaians with his sanitary pads project when more issues affecting the female students beg for government's interventions.

Thank you.
Fred Amankwah - Sarfo
(0544331324)