Company to support education in cocoa growing areas
Acocoa processing company based in Tema, CHOCOMAC Ghana Limited, has indicated its commitment to provide resources towards improving education in cocoa growing communities.
The Chief Executive Officer of the CHOCOMAC, Mr Yaw Wireko Kyei noted that the company’s existence and survival was dependent on the cocoa beans it bought from cocoa farmers, hence, as part of its corporate social responsibility, CHOCOMAC would invest in educational infrastructure to improve academic performance in such communities.
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Presentation of products
Mr Kyei was responding to a request by the chiefs and people of Agona Nkum in the Agona West Municipality and Agona Odoben in the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District in the Central Region during a ceremony to present some of the company’s products to schoolchildren and farmers in both towns.
A total of 2,500 schoolchildren and some cocoa farmers were each presented with a pack of the company’s products to enable them to have a taste of the final product of the cocoa beans bought from them.
Mr Kyei said as a way of giving back to the communities, the company would supply furniture and other educational materials, as well as construct classroom blocks and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) centres in some communities to improve on education in such areas.
He advised the cocoa farmers against engaging their school age children on the farms when they should be in school as that negatively affected the academic performance of children in cocoa growing communities.
Taste for products
He added that the rationale behind the distribution of their products was to develop the taste for cocoa products among the schoolchildren and to also enable the farmers to have a taste of the final product from the cocoa they cultivate.
He said the gesture had been institutionalised by the company and would be undertaken annually in selected communities to increase cocoa consumption among Ghanaians across the country.
For his part, the Chief of Agona Nkum, Nana Nyarko Etua, thanked the company for its benevolence towards the beneficiary communities.
He appealed to the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) to ensure that wards of cocoa farmers benefited from the scholarship scheme so as to enable such children to acquire higher education to become responsible adults.
