District Assemblies urged to give more financial assistance to women

Tamale, June 22, GNA- District Assemblies have been urged to institute deliberate and sustained programmes to empower women entrepreneurship in the Northern Region. The Banks and other financial institutions have been urged to treat women equally just as their male counterparts in the granting of loans and credit facilities to enable them to expand their businesses. This was contained in a communiqu=E9 issued by the BUSAC Fund and the Centre for the Empowerment of the Vulnerable (CEV) a Sunyani based NGO and Diamond FM, a local radio station based in Tamale, at the end of a roundtable meeting held in Tamale on Thursday.

The meeting brought together experts and community leaders to deliberate on "Removing socio-cultural barriers to women entrepreneurship". The communique also appealed for arrangements to be made for better loans disbursement involving men when their wives were accessing micro-credit to make the men jointly responsible for the repayment of the loans. That information on opportunities for growing business should be made available to women entrepreneurs while action should be expedited in passing the new land title registration law currently before parliament to give women equal access to land.

The communique also called for the reformation of traditional practices that militate against women inheritance and property rights to give them equal access to family and spousal property like houses, livestock and land. It also called on women to build their capacity in business to enable them access to banking facilities and insurance products.