By Amoto Ndiewo
School girls in Tana River County are offering sex to get money for sanitary pads, a mentorship forum has heard.
Pastoralist Girls Initiative (PGI) CEO Fatuma Kinzi Abass said many had reportedly suffered ridicule during their monthly periods, forcing them to offer their bodies in exchange for sanitary towels.
‘’This puts them at risk of catching STDs or getting pregnant,’’ feared Kinzi.
The mentorship programme was held at Atata Girls Secondary School in Tana North Sub-county where Kinzi said she had bought sanitary towels for 1,200 girls.
‘’I was saddened to learn that some girls in our region exchange sex for money to buy sanitary towels in order to remain in school,’’ said Kinzi.
She added that the sad part of the story is that it is not easy to pull out of the wicked practice.
While pleading with school girls to be contented with the little they had, she encouraged them to work hard in school and study science and technical subjects.
Her call concurs with the government’s plan to establish a digitalization centre and platforms that will process and automate 500 million records annually or five billion by 2030 under a ten year National Digital Masterplan (2030).
Kinzi, who contested Garissa Woman Representative position in 2017 polls, said the market was ready for women in science and technology and urged them to trigger their thinking capacity and gun for technical subjects. She added that even girls who did not qualified for university can easily enrol for technical courses in TVETS or village polytechnics.
‘’I challenge the young ones to look for solutions in maths, innovation and sciences which will activate their intelligence to gun for greater things,’’ she said, recalling that nothing came easy. ‘’All you have to do is to take the challenge and perform well in school or job.’’
She said schools, colleges and places of work were ready and hungry for all genders, adding that the World Bank (WB) recently released a report demonstrating that the success of a country lies in science and technology.
