Participants at a forum to support women and youth in the Asutsifi North District to identify alternative business practices and local content opportunities in mining and agriculture value chains have lashed out at the district assembly.
The participants numbering about 50 mainly women and youth drawn from mining communities in Asutsifi North District registered their displeasure at the way the district assembly was going about training programmes being spearheaded by some NGOs to help them improve their lot.
This was in reaction to a brief remark by the Assistant Development Planning Officer of Asutsifi North District, Mr Alphorns Amoako, during the forum.
The forum was organised by Wacam, a community-based human rights and environmental mining advocacy, in partnership with Oxfam in Ghana, in the Asutsifi North District on Friday, December 9, 2022.
It aimed at opening avenues for broader consultation and discussions on local content, alternative skills and business development opportunities in mining communities for the benefit of the locals.
According to them, information about such training programmes was not enough, a reason many of them said they were not even aware to enroll.
In this regard, the participants called on the Asutsifi North Assembly to use the information vans to disseminate information on handcraft training programmes by NGOs for the community members.
“Using only the information centres to give announcements on some of these training programmes was not enough. In fact, that explains why many of us in the Asutsifi North District do not get such information to enable us also to enrol,” Auntie Abena, a participant, lamented.
Furthermore, the participants asked the district assembly to be transparent with the whole selection process to prevent defeating the object of the training programmes.
Earlier, the Programmes Officer of the Centre for Environmental Impact Analysis, Paa Kwesi Sackey, delivered a presentation on “Alternative Business and Skills Development Programmes for Women and Youth in Asutsifi North District.”