Secondary, Senior Secondary Schools in district to install vending machines
Ejaz-ul-haq Bhat
Bandipora, Jan 25 : Taking a cue from Padman Arunachalam Muruganantham’s low-cost pad-making, the district administration Bandipora is going to install low-cost sanitary pad vending machine in Secondary and Higher Secondary Schools of the district to ensure menstrual hygiene in female students.
According to wire service—, Deputy Commissioner Bandipora dedicated the units to schools during a function organized to celebrate the National Girl Child Day on Friday.
In the first phase, the units will be installed in 65 secondary and senior secondary institutions of the district. The unit includes a pad-making vending machine and an incinerator used to properly dispose-off the used pads at high temperatures until it is reduced to ash.
With an aim to ensure menstrual hygiene in female students, the sanitary pads will be sold to the students for less than a third of the cost of commercial pads.
The Department of Rural Development shall provide the Vending machines and Incinerators to the Department of Education under Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).
DC Bandipora, Shahbaz Ahmad Mirza said the investment in the unit is nominal and the product price will be affordable to the female student’s especially in rural areas and will help to discard the traditional method of using unhygienic cloth by switching over to these low-cost sanitary pads. Arunachalam Muruganantham from Coimbatore Tamil Nadu was obsessed with making the perfect sanitary pad for his wife.
The obsession led him to invent a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine, earning him the title of a social entrepreneur and ‘the Padman’.
Akshay Kumar-starrer ‘Padman’ movie was inspired by Arunachalam Muruganantham, who started making affordable sanitary pads to help women in rural India. Joint Director Planning Imtiyaz Ahmad said the invention became a motivation for the Bandipora district administration and in the first phase, the administration shall install the machines in 65 Secondary and Senior Secondary Schools.
He said in the second phase the administration aims to make the machines available at the Panchayat level for rural women and said that the aim of the idea is to ensure menstrual hygiene among women especially students and rural women from economically weaker sections of the society. (KNO)
