Call for government to provide free sanitary towels

MPs were united in their call for government to remove VAT from the cost of sanitary towels when they discussed the topic with National Treasury.

Members said that women should not be punished for something that was natural and the government has a duty to support those who need assistance, such as underprivileged women and young women at school and university. In response to this call, Treasury argued that removing VAT for “necessities” is an ineffective way of dealing with the problem, as the rich consume more necessities than the poor. It also referred to a 2007 VAT study which indicated that the most desirable VAT system to have is one with the least number of exemptions and zero-ratings. Treasury highlighted that between the 2013/2014 financial years, an estimated R20.1 billion was lost from zero-rating VAT on 19 basic food items. Immediately following the zero-rating of illuminating paraffin in 2001, more requests were made, including household candles, books, red meat, canned vegetables and now sanitary towels. Treasury further argued that because tax has an important redistribution function, the state would be undermining its objectives by lowering the tax on sanitary pads.
Lawmakers were unhappy with this explanation and pointed out that millions of girls in this country and across the continent miss school because they are too poor to buy sanitary towels. In their view, this was an issue of dignity and a special and urgent effort should be made to address this.

Treasury asked MPs to look at options that are more likely to achieve their objectives than the VAT exemption. This included a more targeted solution, where a budget can be made available either through the departments of health or basic and higher education to make sanitary pads freely available at schools, universities and other learning institutions.

At the same meeting, National Treasury briefed the Committee on gender mainstreaming, gender responsive budgeting and the allocation of funding to the Department of Women in the Presidency and the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE). MPs voiced concern that too much of the budget is allocated for administration and not enough for implementation. The general consensus was that money is being poured down a dark hole, with no valuable outcome yielded with respect to the advancement of women.  National Treasury said that Gender-responsive budgeting is broader than the mere tallying of expenditure on women and girls as part of the country’s budget. Gender mainstreaming identifies gender patterns in society and aligns policies and expenditure to address prevailing gender-based inequalities. Gender-aware performance planning is thus necessary before any gender-responsive budgeting initiatives can have any impact. The challenges faced in developing a gender responsive budget are that there is no practiced and coherent gender-responsive budgeting policy framework to use as a template, and also that data collection and management, necessary for a responsive budget, is costly. Only programmes that are formally submitted by departments to the National Treasury for consideration can be funded. These proposals go to Cabinet after consideration by the Minister’s Committee on the Budget. The programmes are then assessed in terms of their government priority status, their potential impact and the department’s implementation readiness.