Free Pads Should Benefit The Needy

It’s
that time of the year again: Budgets are due to be read shortly, and
I’m sure Uhuru Kenyatta and his colleagues are working late, rounding up
the millions, and mapping out Kenya’s spending for the fiscal year
ahead. Prime Minister Raila Odinga also has some points he’d like to see
included, and I’m not talking about the need or otherwise to book
presidential suites for him. Odinga has ordered the treasury to earmark
funds so that schools can provide sanitary pads for girls.
 The Focus Group (read: Facebook friends) discussed this issue online.
There were a number of people who didn’t quite see the point: ‘What
next?’, one commenter said. ‘Will we have to give them sick leave?” Well
no, and that’s not really the point. I asked him (of course it was a
him) whether he had ever had a period. This was a rhetorical question,
but he still answered with an indignant, capital-lettered NO. Just what I
thought.
 Condoms are subsidised by donors, and the state launched an initiative
to provide free circumcision services for men back in 2008 to reduce the
spread of HIV. Now you can prevent the spread of HIV through
intercourse by not having intercourse. There’s an element of choice in
keeping your tackle in your trousers (for men at least – unfortunately,
women don’t always have that choice whether the guy will keep it in his
pants). With periods, in contrast, you have considerably less choice,
and I think it is entirely fair and defensible that a budget should
address uniquely female needs.
 But I found it encouraging that a good number of guys were a lot more
understanding. And this was not the end of the argument. The guy who had
initiated the discussion in the first place was not convinced that
government should be involved in providing sanitary pads as, he argued,
this was an area that was well covered by NGOs already. Why should the
state interfere? Another one commented that having sanitary pads would
make little difference to girls’ education if they were hungry, if the
classroom had a crumbling roof and they had to race home when it rained,
or there were other such restrictions. And yet another said that money
for sanitary pad allocations would surely be spent in a way that someone
got rich of it.
 All interesting points, and a lot more productive to think about than
the first guy’s (non) argument. That money set aside for a specific
purpose will be misused is by no means specific to sanitary pad
allocations, but occurs across the board. Check the CDF reviews, or
ponder where the money for the youth work campaign went. MARS Group are
still asking where millions of shillings from the 2007/08 and 2008/09
fiscal years went. And pads can be bought at bulk rates from a local
manufacturer who will make money - like any contractor or supplier to
government.
 But I was even less convinced of the argument that this is an area that
should be left to NGOs: For one, I didn’t buy that NGOs had this well
covered. And then there is the more substantial issue that leaving this
to NGOs essentially means that the state has failed: Failed to look
after the needy ones of its girl citizens. Why should they have to
depend on NGO charity handouts and not be looked after by the state?
 This NGO involvement also contributes to the fact that girls’ periods
and sanitary pads are such a standalone issue. In an ideal scenario,
there would be a local healthcare outreach service that has already
integrated this in its service provisions, that teaches families about
the whole range of basic healthcare issues: why it’s important to wash
hands, drink clean water, prevent diarrhea and dehydration. And also why
girls should have pads – several people interestingly pointed out that
of course not all families are poor, but often decide that pads are not a
necessity. And anything else that kids, both male and female, need to
know about reproductive health issues (including, perhaps, making boys
understand this whole period thing). If the state had this capacity on
the local level, there wouldn’t be a multitude of NGOs splitting this up
into single-issue campaigns, riding in their four-wheel drives to do
sanitary pads today, hand-washing campaigns tomorrow. This takes money:
the treasury needs to fund a public health service. But it is of course
more than just a financial allocation. It requires political will to
build a competent, effective, non-corrupt public health service.
 As it stands, an allocation for sanitary pads, as much as I defend the
right and the need to budget for specifically female issues, might just
end up like free primary education: Free in principle, as long as you
pay the desk fee and the motivation fee and whatever other fees there
are.