Mrs. Janet Museveni the first lady and education minister has caused a national stir this week after she told MPs that government will not be providing sanitary pads to school going girls who normally run out of school when their menstrual periods start because the ministry does not have money to cater for the pledge.
The latest of Mrs Museveni’s attackers is Dr Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow who last year infamously stripped to knickers protesting against a decision against her at Makerere University.
While campaigning in Lango sub region in 2015, President Museveni promised that if elected back into power, his government would provide school going girls with sanitary pads.
“So that the girls do not run out of school because they are embarrassed by their periods when they do not have pads,” the president said then.
On Thursday, Ms Nyanzi, a mother herself today expressed her displeasure online wondering why Mrs. Museveni’s ministry has not got the funding for this in our budget yet.
“I refuse to refer to Janet Kataaha Museveni as Mama anything. Uganda’s poor children are motherless,” Ms Nyanzi said.
She wondered how ‘a whole mother can go to parliament and ask legislators to understand the claim that there is no money in Uganda to provide sanitary pads to school-girls’.
“What sort of mother allows her daughters to keep away from school because they are too poor to afford padding materials that would adequately protect them from the shame and ridicule that comes by staining their uniforms with menstrual blood? Ms Nyanzi questioned.
“My mother introduced me to disposable Lilia sanitary towels. She also taught me how to fold layers of soft toilet tissue to use in case I lacked Lilia,” she said, contrasting Mrs Museveni with her own mother. “My mother provided in order to protect my dignity and hygiene. I excelled at school although I was a menstruating girl.”
Still, for Nyanzi, there is that issue with priorities.
“She can’t convince President Museveni to either buy less bullets or think of alternative low-budget menstruation materials,” she said.
