Women in rice farming get processing centre
A GH¢ 216,446,000 rice processing centre to enhance rice production, especially for smallholder women rice farmers in Jantong-Daboashie and its surrounding communities in the East Gonja District in the Northern Region, has been inaugurated.
Advertisement
Before the inauguration of the centre, women in Jantong-Daboashie and its environs, most of whom are into rice cultivation, had to use traditional crude methods to process their farm produce (rice) which affected their health, while others who could not do so had to carry parboiled rice on their heads and walk over 30 kilometres (km) to Tamale to mill their rice before they could sell.
Rice is a staple food and a cash crop cultivated in almost every household in Jantong-Daboashie and its environs.
The centre was provided by the Christian Children’s Fund of Canada (CCFC), in partnership with the Presbyterian Farmers Training and Child Development Programme (PFTCDP), both Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that are into child sponsorship and protection programmes, women empowerment and poverty reduction in deprived communities in northern Ghana.
The rice processing facility has the capacity to process 200 bags of rice a day and it is to improve the income level of families by adding value to their farm produce (rice).
Other support
Aside from the provision of the rice milling plant, the two organisations intend to add a groundnut shelling machine and a shea butter extraction plant to help the various women groups in the area who are into groundnut and shea butter processing to add value to their produce.
Inauguration
At the inauguration ceremony at Jantong-Daboashie, the Country Director of CCFC, Mr George Baiden, thanked the women for their patience since the project took almost two years to complete due to issues with power for the plant.
He said CCFC wanted the children in the area to achieve their dreams and full potential, and that was why it invested in the rice mill plant for the women, and expressed the hope that the women would work hard to ensure that all their children acquired education.
Mr Baiden was happy that at long last, the facility had been inaugurated and it would help reduce the drudgery the women went through to process the rice. He also urged them to also look at increase in shea butter production since that also held a lot of promise for them.
The Chairman of the Northern Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), Reverend Dr Solomon Sumani Sule-Saa, encouraged the people to ensure that the facility was well maintained.
He urged the women to ensure that all their children were educated.
He also asked them to maintain their environment by planting trees so that climate change would not affect their farming activities and their environment.
The project
The Minister in charge of Rural Tamale of the PCG, Rev. Dr Edward Haruna, said the facility was to assist smallholder farmers, especially women who were into rice production, to mill their rice easily without going through the laborious process which also had a toll on their health.
He added that the overall objective of the project was to contribute to the reduction of youth and women unemployment, adding that so far, 80 youth and 40 women had been trained in good agronomic practices and rice processing in the area by the PFTCDP.
Savings
Rev. Dr Haruna stated that aside from the provision of the rice processing centre, a total of 45 village savings and loans associations (VSLA), consisting of 1,467 members, had been formed in 15 communities in the programme area and so far an amount of GH¢156,125,000 had been mobilised; while another savings scheme dubbed “Youth Savings and Loans Association” (YSLA) was being piloted and was targeted at the youth between 14 and 25 years.
He added that the programme was also aimed at reducing rural-urban drift among the youth in the area to the cities for non-existent jobs, enhancing community self-initiated development projects, opening other market opportunities for the people in the areas of food vending, bicycle and motorcycle repairs, hair dressing, barbering, among others as alternative sources of livelihoods for the youth in the area.
He thanked CCFC for the continuous support to the project and added that the PFTCDP for the past 17 years had been implementing interventions in the areas of child sponsorship, education, health and nutrition, water, sanitation and economic growth for the people in the communities in which it operated.
The Coordinating Director of the East Gonja District Assembly, Mr Abdul Karim Yahaya, said the assembly would ensure that the facility was put to good use to enhance the income level of families in the area. He gave the assurance that the government would also ensure that the community had its fair share of development projects to improve upon the living conditions of the people in the area.