Small-scale enterprises can help solve unemployment problem

Effiduase (Ash), Sept. 16, GNA - Mrs Grace Coleman, Member of Parliament (MP) for Effiduase/Asokore has said that the solution to the unemployment problem in the country lay in the creation and promotion of small-scale industries.

She declared that any Government, which claims that it can solve the unemployment problem without turning to the promotion and assisting the small-scale industrial sector, would be deceiving itself. She was speaking at the inauguration of the Sekyere East branch of the Association of Small-Scale Industries (ASSI) at Effiduase.

Mrs Coleman said Ghana should take a cue from the India, which she noted though has a population of almost one billion, has unemployment figure less than that of Ghana with a population of less than 20 million. There is, therefore, the need for the country to learn from India and begin to take the promotion of small-scale industries seriously.

Mrs Coleman disclosed that 26 towns and villages in her constituency would have electricity by January next year under the Greater Accra/Ashanti electrification project of the Ministry of Mines and Energy. On the current situation at the University of Ghana, Legon, the MP regretted that demonstrations have become a permanent feature on the country's educational calendar.

She noted that education in the country is now in crisis and said it, therefore, needs the intervention of Ghanaians themselves to save the situation and called on them to endeavour to support tertiary education in spite of the hardships.

Mrs Beatrice Boakye of the Business Advisory Centre noted that small-scale enterprises are the vehicles of economic activities in the country and said Government, therefore, recognised their importance. She asked them to take advantage of organisations set up to help small-scale entrepreneurs to get assistance in the areas of management and finance.

Mr Kwame De-Graft Adjei, Sekyere East District Chief Executive (DCE), in speech read on his behalf disclosed that the assembly has voted 50 million cedis to support small-scale groups in the district. He said the Rural Enterprise Project has also given out loans totalling about 26 million cedis to small groups and is also training them in tie and dye, batik and soap making, while the assembly has asked for additional 45 million cedis for the project.

Under the Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) the construction of roads in the district's portion of the Afram Plains have been awarded on contract to open up the place. Mr Kwame Buor, Ashanti Regional chairman of the association, said the inauguration of the Sekyere East branch brings to four the number of branches established in the region.

He called for co-operation between the association and the district assembly to facilitate the needed assistance from it. Mr James Oppong, the Sekyere East District chairman of the association, said one of the major objectives of the association is to help needy children to learn a vocation or skills of a sort so as to be able to fend for themselves instead of becoming liabilities to the state.