Rural Enterprise Project makes big impact

The government’s driven social intervention to reduce rural poverty - Rural Enterprises Project (REP), is making a huge impact on the lives of people at Gyadam, a farming community in Asante-Akim South District.

It has helped to provide direct employment for about 40 of them and indirect jobs for dozens others.

This was made possible through the installation of a wood-mizer at a local sawmill in the community through the support of the project.

Mr Thomas Kwaku Dovi, Manager of Dovitom Wood Processing Company, told Ghana News Agency (GNA) that prior to the acquisition of the equipment, the corporate entity was providing jobs for about 15 people.

He said apart from the substantial increase in the number of the company’s workers, it is also indirectly supporting many others to eke out a living – food vendors, those engaged to load sawed lumber into trucks, and drivers.

He was emphatic that the economy of the area has been markedly transformed with customers travelling from Accra and others parts of the country to do business - buy wood products.

The GNA visited the community, which has been turned into one shop centre for wood products under STAR-Ghana’s media auditing and tracking of development project, an initiative launched to put the spotlight on how government’s resources, are helping to improve on the quality of life of the people, particularly the rural population.

The goal is to aid transparency, promote accountability and good local governance.

Mr Dovi said another advantage of the state-of-the-art machinery is that it has brought about high level of production efficiency pointing out that the waste of wood, associated with the chainsaw, is now gone.

The company no longer sources its raw materials from illegal loggers but from licensed timber operators.

Mr Aikins Agyapong, Head of the Business Advisory Centre, put the cost of the wood-mizer at GH¢ 45,000.00 and said it was purchased with a loan facility.

“This was after we had built the capacity of the beneficiary company on best business practices as part of our core mandate of enterprise development,” he added

He informed the GNA that said there are plans to extend the support to other businesses.