The Asiakwa Roman Catholic Basic School Teacher, Madam Bernice Mawusi Dogah, has praised Asiakwahene, Daasebre Doctor Twum Ampofo II, for prioritizing and investing in girl-child education.
She said Doctor Twum Ampofo’s commitment to girl-child education is very awesome. Taking steps to adopt some 60 vulnerable young girls drawn from various Basic Schools in the community and promising to take care of them until they complete Junior High School (JHS) is a very good initiative.
The move, she said, made them overwhelmed upon hearing the news.
“Looking at our current economy, it is not easy for someone to adopt 60 young female schoolchildren and sponsor their education,” she added.
Asiakwahene collaborated with his Nkɔsoɔhemaa, Nana Fofi Afia, to organize a 2-day educational program for the girls dubbed: ” POSITIVE PERIOD,” where they were taken through how to keep themselves clean when menstruating, and each person was given a sanitary pad and other items after the program.
Madam Mawusi Dogah expressed her heartfelt appreciation on behalf of the young female schoolchildren to Asiakwahene and his cabinet for the kind gesture and said the items received, especially the sanitary pads, will help the girls in diverse ways because they are expensive, and most of them cannot afford them.
She used the opportunity and appealed to the Government of Ghana (GoG) to scrap the taxes on sanitary pads and make them affordable so that every young girl can purchase them to enable them to be punctual to school during their menstrual period.
Adding to the development, the Asiakwa Nkɔsoɔhemaa (Development Queen Mother) Nana Fofi Afia I bemoaned how poverty is causing a lot of problems for many young girls in the country to the extent that they cannot afford sanitary pads.
“As a traditional ruler, we can’t sit down aloof and watch our future leaders continuously drop out of school because of sanitary pads when menstruating, hence supporting Daasebre Dr. Twum Ampofo’s vision to distribute sanitary pads to the less privileged girls in Asiakwa to help them complete JHS,” she stated.
Nana Fofi Afia expressed her gratitude to her Netherlands-based partners for their continuous support and stated that their partnership has been beneficial in addressing the challenges confronting young female schoolchildren in the area.
In his address, Asiakwahene, Daasebre Dr. Twum Ampofo said he has realized that the less privileged young girls in his community feel bashful when going to school during their menstrual period because they don’t have money to buy sanitary pads and if the blood splashes in their uniform their colleagues mock at them and to avoid this embarrassment they prefer staying at home.
Dr. Twum Ampofo, who also serves as Okyeman Nifahene, emphatically stressed they can’t allow the sanitary pads issue to become a hindrance to the education of the teenage girls in his community.
“Therefore, in every Akwasidae celebration [that is, every month], sanitary pads would be provided for them to enable them to attend school every day and have peace of mind to study,” he noted.
By// Kontihen Kofi Oboh.
Source// Obohnewsonline.com.
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