Parliament Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities has considered a petition by grassroots movement #TeamFreeSanitaryPads, which is calling for the provision of free sanitary towels and menstrual health.
This comes after numerous demonstrations by the organisation dating back to 2019, when it requested Parliament to draft a menstrual health bill after its petition garnered more than 40 000 signatures.
The movement briefed the committee on challenges that have been attributed to the failure to implement the Sanitary Dignity Programme (SDP) on Tuesday.
Insufficient funding, procurement delays and sanitary products quality were amongst some of the difficulties raised by the movement.
Committee Chairperson, Liezl van der Merwe expressed concern over the stagnant progress in this pursuit.
“It is unacceptable that we still have young girls missing school and women unable to access their basic dignity due to period poverty.
This is a violation of their human rights that we can no longer tolerate,” said Van de Merwe.”
She reiterated the government’s constitutional obligation to ensure that the dignity and rights of all young girls are upheld.
According to a statement by the committee, an amount to the tune of R400 million was requested to fund the programme, but only R157 million was allocated in the first year.
The current price of sanitary towels in South Africa is around R15.00 and varies with the product and retail stores.
Van der Merwe has committed to ensure that the programme is implemented and will launch an inquiry to understand the implementation challenges and develop recommendations.
