Govt to revamp bamboo, cane, rattan industries
The government, through the Education Ministry, is offering a grant to the bamboo, cane and the rattan industries in the country to boost their trade for the local market and for export.
The Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who announced this, explained that the grant, which was under the Ghana Skills Development Fund (GSDF), would be in the form of training to sharpen their skills and promote their operations.
Advertisement
He explained that the move, which would be done under the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), was also considering absorbing that business as one of the trade models of study in TVET institutions.
Plans for weavers
Dr Adutwum announced this when he visited the workshop of the bamboo, cane and rattan weavers at Cantonments in Accra to interact with them.
The visit was aimed at giving them first-hand information on plans by the government to help them access the grant.
The GSDF is aimed at addressing the skills and technological needs of the enterprise in both the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
Dr Adutwum announced that a team of experts would soon meet the leadership of the craftspersons to discuss how best they could sign up for the grant.
He indicated that the government was doing everything possible to create an enabling environment to ensure that businesses in the country boomed to support local and international trade.
Ripple effect
The minister stated that the grant, when given, would go a long way to create jobs for hundreds of people within the value chain and their dependents from the raw material business to the non-traditional export levels of the nation's economy.
Dr Adutwum lauded the CTVET for sharpening the skills of the youth to empower them economically so they could fend for themselves and also contribute towards the development of the nation's economy.
Other Trending Stories
He hinted at efforts to meet with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which had oversight responsibility over the Bamboo and Rattan Development Programme (BARADEP), the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) and other related institutions to work together to get the best for the sector.
The Chairman of the Bamboo, Cane and Rattan Association, Philip Wosonu, was full of praise for the minister for the effort to support them to build their capacity and help boost their operations.
He mentioned that connecting their activities to the TVET sector would help students to do their practicals with them as well as share ideas with the students.
The Chairman of the association called on the government to help ease the challenges faced in the transportation of the raw materials from the forest as security officials kept harassing them, making it difficult to get raw materials for their operations.
Background
The government, through the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) 2015, constructed a centre at Ayi Mensah in the Greater Accra Region at a cost of US$416,000 to serve as a permanent abode for the artisans in the Greater Accra Region.
The centre was constructed to help alleviate the plight of the bamboo, cane and rattan artisans in the region.
It must be noted that the construction of the centre was to relocate some of the artisans following the construction of the George Walker Bush (N1) and the Akuapem highways as some of them used to work along the roads.