By: Rodney Pienaar
The minister of gender equality and child welfare, Doreen Sioka, has revealed that of the females living in rural areas, only 17% have access to improved sanitation facilities.
This means that more women are being deprived of the privacy and infrastructure required for healthy, safe and hygienic menstrual management.
“The government, together with UNICEF, supported the establishment of Menstrual Hygiene Management Clubs as part of the School Led Total Sanitation, program.”
“Through this programme, girls and boys in schools are equipped with knowledge about menstruation and empowered to know the facts about this natural process. UNICEF is in the process of conducting the study on sanitary products in Namibia.”
Sioka said there are a number of organisations that wish to provide menstrual health products to learners, particularly re-washable ones.
A total number of 52 menstrual hygiene management clubs have been established country wide and the government is making efforts to address the gap in menstrual health and hygiene as one of the strategies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, she said.
Meanwhile, in 2019/20 the education ministry will send out a directive to schools to use some of the education grant funds as seed money to start income generating projects that can assist in the provision of menstrual health products for learners.
The minister said one of the key interventions in the pipeline is to explore the possibility of tax exemption on sanitary products.
“There is need to determine whether or not government has to make budgetary provisions to ensure monthly provision of sanitary products to needy children.”
“Sanitary as well as menstrual products are not yet tax free and what financial implications on the economy in the long run this could have has not yet been established,” she said.
She added that there is still no national study on the relationship between sanitary products and school drop-out and absenteeism.
