In order to facilitate purchases by women and teenage girls across the nation, the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana has joined demands for the government to abolish duties on imported sanitary pads.
This comes after a number of civil society organisations stormed the Parliament Building on 22 June while decked out in red and holding a number of banners calling for the removal of import duties on sanitary napkins.
Sampson Asaki Awingobit, executive secretary of the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana, stated in an interview with Citi News that it is important to take into account the suffering of certain women and the difficulty some adolescent girls have in paying for the expensive sanitary products.
“By not thinking about the plight of the ordinary citizens, by not thinking about our children in the junior high school, the senior high school, and even in the colleges, there some young women are finding it difficult to find money to buy sanitary pads to take care of themselves when they are on their period and so for us, we think that we cannot be chasing money and forget about the human aspect of it and so for me and my outfit, we strongly oppose it.”
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) believes otherwise saying the removal of the taxes could result in dire consequences for the economy.
