2025 Budget Statement: Thumbs up sanitary pads, come again betting tax

Abolished: One per cent tax on E-Levy!

Abolished: 1.5 per cent withholding tax on winnings from unprocessed gold by small-scale mines!

Abolished: VAT on vehicle insurance!

Abolished: Emission levy on industries and vehicles

Abolished: 10 Per cent Betting tax!

Akwaaba:  Free sanitary pads for girls!

Not too much into analysing budget statements, not even when I was an active corporate manager in charge of the appropriation of my organisation’s one per cent budget allocation from a huge net profit of sales (NPS) every year.

Nonetheless, I try to follow national budgets to see where they affect my life. And so I did with the 2025 Budget Statement of two weeks ago.

A couple of the interventions struck me leaving me with questions and a thumbs-up.

Free sanitary pad

I clapped for the introduction of free sanitary pads for girls in primary and secondary schools. It has been long overdue.

At a time when we were coming out of the disastrous effects of COVID-19, the Ghana Education Service (GES) carried out some research into the rampant teenage pregnancies and absenteeism from school.

With the long periods of school closures and children at home while parents were at work, the idleness pushed some of the girls into mischief, with excuses that they needed money to purchase sanitary pads, hence the attraction to sleep with men.

With absenteeism from school, one recurring reason given was that since the boys and sometimes their own peers made fun of them when they accidentally soiled themselves, they preferred to stay at home at that time of the month.

Following the research, Zonta Club, a staunch advocate for women and girls’ rights with a commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a strong belief in support mechanisms that enabled girls to come out and assert themselves, bought into the GES research results and adopted a disadvantaged school in Greater

Accra, where they have since continued to supply free sanitary pads to the girls with encouraging results.

Thus, the government’s free supply of pads to young girls from primary five to senior high school is a laudable idea.  

According to the budget statement, the government has allocated GH¢292.4 million with the aim to help address menstrual hygiene challenges and also reduce absenteeism of girls in schools.

Other countries

Though better late than never, Ghana has joined a number of countries already executing this noble idea of free sanitary pads for girls. In Africa, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia and Uganda are already giving free sanitary pads to young girls in school, for the same reason of curbing absenteeism and early pregnancy.

In West Africa, Ghana seems to be ahead with that policy.

The practice of free sanitary pads and tampons is also in force in some Western nations, including Scotland, New Zealand, some states in Australia, the United States, Canada, France and South Korea in Asia.

The policy is forward-looking for which Ghana and the other countries must be commended.

One prays it will grow from strength to strength to keep girls from needless exploitation and also keep them in school.

The other good thing is the noble idea of creating jobs in the sanitary pad manufacturing and its related businesses.

Betting tax

However, my one disappointment with the budget has to do with the removal of the 10 per cent betting tax.

My displeasure is from the underlying negative social undercurrents that betting could present among our youth.

Last year I had the opportunity to chat with a Psychiatric Specialist at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital on mental health issues in the country. He bemoaned the destroying effect that addiction to betting was having on a section of the population.

It was shocking to hear from him the number of people who were attending their clinics with betting addiction and related psychiatric conditions.

In his assessment, because of the monies people were getting from doing nothing but betting, some have become hooked on that, spending days and weeks betting from the comfort of their own devices and betting shops.

The Psychiatrist told me some addicts would go to the extent of spending their earnings, selling their valuables and sometimes family heirlooms to get money for betting.

Others go to the extent of bank and private borrowings, ending up with debts which sometimes get them dragged to court.

Sadly, through betting addiction, some have lost their jobs, their marriages and other valuable relationships.

It was shocking to learn from the expert that some have even ended up with suicidal tendencies because of the social dejection suffered through betting addiction. 

It is in the light of some such social misgivings that I thought taxing betting was a form of social deterrent.  

Come to think of it, if it is made less lucrative, who would want to indulge in it and get hooked up?

Betting, one learns, could cause disastrous addictions with the resulting mental health problems including suicide. 

It is already destroying individuals, families and relationships.

Plugging it could be one way out.

Writer’s E-mail: vickywirekoandoh@yahoo.com