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President John Mahama has said critics, who derided and labelled him �pad man� because Ghana got onboard a World Bank pilot programme meant to distribute sanitary pads to schoolgirls, denigrated him unjustifiably without understanding the necessity and importance of the programme. Speaking to Journalists on various issues in London, where he is visiting, Mahama explained, for the first time that the sanitary pad distribution programme was aimed at keeping girls in school during their menstrual period. ��I mean people rubbished it without understanding why�, Mahama bemoaned. �In Eastern and Southern Africa, it�s a basic [thing] for girls attending secondary school because a survey was done and it was realised that girls lose one month of school every year because they didn�t have the appropriate sanitary instruments to be able to look after themselves while they are in school and so once they enter that season they just don�t go to school and it was affecting the progress of girls in secondary education and so we are not the first to do it�, President Mahama explained. He reiterated that: �It�s done in Eastern and Southern Africa. Indeed they sponsor it themselves. And so this was a pilot that the World Bank introduced, and I mean people just laughed at it, called me �pad man� and all that kind of thing. But I�m certain that these things were well thought out by the Ministry of Education�. According to him, apart from the sanitary pad bit of the programme, the agreement signed between Ghana and the Bank would also ��invest more than one hundred million dollars in secondary education both in terms of improving quality, in terms of improving the teaching and learning experience that the students go through, [and] in terms of providing scholarships�. Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com