The company donated over 200 cartons of sanitary towels which were distributed amongst the school girls from the five primary schools in the area.
They were on Monday receiving a donation of over 200 cartons of sanitary towels donated to girls in several primary schools in Lugazi, extended by M/S Software Uganda Limited, a Chinese investment company soon opening a sanitary ware factory in the newly opened Lugazi Industrial Park complex.
The donation by the Chinese company comes as a commemoration of this year’s International Women’s Day to the female learners of five schools, at a function held at Lugazi East Primary School and officiated over by Lugazi Municipality Mayor, John Bosco Asea Ozuma.
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Florence Anyero, a teacher of Lugazi Model Primary School said their school has made attempts to provide sanitary pads to their learners whose parents do not have the ability to buy them. Anyero however told New Vision that they have been overwhelmed by their big numbers, and appealed to the government to cut costs on them to enable every learner the opportunity to access them.
She was echoed by the learners who variously appealed to the government to prevail on tax authorities to have consideration for poor parents who are already burdened by other school requirements, by reducing the cost of the sanitary pads.
The teachers’ and pupils’ call comes nearly a decade after President Museveni pledged to provide free sanitary pads to all school-going girls in Uganda. However, the President’s promise he made while campaigning in the Lango sub-region in 2015 is yet to come to pass.
During the Parliamentary session held on March 6, 2025, the Gender Minister, Betty Amongi officially retracted the President’s commitment citing economic constraints.
Amongi who was responding to Luweero district Woman Member of Parliament who raised the matter on the floor of parliament said she will present the issue of tax exemptions on sanitary products to Cabinet for discussion.
Following the 2024 Auditor General’s report, it revealed that 64 percent of the female students miss school due to lack of sanitary pads, water and proper disposal facilities from their schools.
The report indicated that 64 percent of the surveyed girls (138 out of 216) had been absent from class due to menstruation, primarily due to lack of menstrual hygiene products and inadequate sanitary infrastructure in their respective schools.
The auditor’s report further indicated that 46 percent of the 48 schools visited did not provide emergency pads or menstrual health support, leaving many female students without essential hygiene materials.
Apart from the school-going girls, MP Nabukenya also highlighted the plight of the female prisoners whom she said struggle a lot when it comes to the period of menstrual periods.
“Many of them only receive the sanitary towels when their families visit them in prisons. And for the rest of the periods or those who are unlucky that they are not visited, they suffer locally,” she said.
Lugazi Municipality Inspector of Schools, Chouldry Manana lamented that some of the school girls cannot even get knickers from their parents.
Manana noted that sometimes, such challenges including the hunt for sanitary pads force the innocent girls to seek for them from bad people, who end up endangering them with the possibility of luring them into sexual intercourse and its unwanted consequences.
The Legal Officer for M/S Software Festo Mugisha said they have a yearning heart to provide much cheaper products but are constrained by the taxes that push the production costs high.
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“We however try as much as possible to provide a quality product on the market with relative process,” he said, noting that in the past, sanitary products were tax free and also their prices were very low compared to today.
Welcoming the Chinese donors, Lugazi Mayor, John Bosco Asea Ozuma said that incentives including water, electricity and good roads are what attracted the investors to Lugazi, adding that Software are the pioneers with others to follow.
Ozuma said with a composition of a rural-urban population, Lugazi has a diversity of cultures which he said make it imperative that a variety of investors to cater for the needs of the different people inhabiting Lugazi are attracted to the area.
Li Junhao, the Managing Director of Software Uganda, said his company has been in Uganda for many years, with an addition in their line of production, of sanitary pads and diapers. He said they propose to get into production from Lugazi Industrial Park at the end of August this year.
Junhao said their company has a soft spot for the health of women and children, and that it is the reason they zeroed on production of their hygienic facilities like sanitary pads and babies’ diapers.
The company donated over 200 cartons of sanitary towels which were distributed amongst the school girls from the five primary schools in the area.
