The Minister for Interior and Member of Parliament (MP) for Nandom Constituency, Mr. Ambrose Dery, has launched a skills and entrepreneurship training programme to provide skills in various light manufacturing areas and entrepreneurship to 1,240 prison officers and inmates as starter packs and kits.
The programme, dubbed ‘Entrepreneurship for Restoration, was a collaboration between the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) and the Ghana Prisons Service (GPS).
The NEIP initiative provides grants and loans as capital for officers who have been trained to enable them to set up these businesses properly, and working capital to inmates for their set-up upon their discharge from prisons.
The grants and loans will be provided under the Youth in Innovative Agric disbursement for those who did fruit juice processing, the Presidential Startup support, and Youstart for the other products.
The light manufacturing areas for the training include soap and detergents making, grains and cereals processing and packaging, juice processing and packaging from all our local fruits, nuts tubers and legumes processing and packaging, production of local nonalcoholic drinks like sobolo, asana, atadwe ginger drink, lamuji, saamea etc, production of youghurt and edible oils from palm oil and coconut oil, cosmetics making and many others.
Launching the programme, Mr. Dery expressed the excitement that the programme will serve as a life-changing journey in the lives of the fifteen thousand (15,000) young inmates in the country’s prisons adding that at least 82% of inmates in Ghana’s prisons are youth between the ages of 18 and 35 years.
He said the beneficiaries of the programme will be contributing to the longer-term strategic vision of consolidating middle-income status and further building an industry-driven economy.
Speaking at the same event, the Deputy Minister in charge of Wealth Creation at the Finance Ministry, Dr. John Ampontuah Kumah said the collaboration between the NEIP and the GPS aligns with the national agenda of promoting entrepreneurship and innovation.
Dr. Kumah added that government recognises entrepreneurship as a powerful tool for economic growth, job creation and social transformation.
“Ghana’s prisons should not only be institutions of punishment but rather be an area for rehabilitation, redemption and restoration because empowering inmates with vocational skills and entrepreneurial knowledge will equip the inmates for a brighter future and also foster their re-integration into society as productive citizens,” he said.
The Chief Executive Officer of the NEIP, Mr. Kofi Ofosu said the production of detergent by the inmates would help to improve the hygiene and well-being in the prisons and help to reduce diseases and rashes, among inmates.
He added that the various food and drink products produced by inmates would also improve their own diet and help their overall health.
“It will also help to reduce the resources the government spends to provide detergent and food products to inmates.
“Economically, the prisons will also generate some money from the sale of these packaged products,” he added.
Mr Nkansah announced that the NEIP was collaborating with regulatory bodies such as the Ghana Standards Authority and the Food and Drugs Authority for the products to be approved for the market.
The Director General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mr. I.K. Egyir on his part, charged his officers participating in the training to take it seriously, so they can also transfer knowledge to other inmates yet to benefit from it.
