30 GRADUATE TRAINEES RECEIVE SUPPORT (PAGE 23)

By Akwasi Ampratwum-Mensah, Berekum

THIRTY graduate apprentices including 10 females in the Berekum Municipality of the Brong Ahafo Region, who successfully completed their training in various trades, have been presented with tools and equipment worth GH¢11,000 to enable them to establish and operate their own small businesses.
The donation was made possible under the Rural Enterprises Project (REP), which is being jointly funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Government of Ghana (GOG).
The Berekum Municipal Assembly supported the programme with GH¢2,000.
The REP is part of the government’s programme to reduce poverty, create employment and thereby improve the standard of living in poor rural communities.
The graduate apprentices learnt hairdressing, dressmaking and tailoring, auto mechanics, auto electricals, vulcanizing, gas welding, television/radio mechanics, carpentry, motorbike mechanics, barbering, and heavy-duty mechanics.
The tools and equipment were given free of charge.
In a speech read on his behalf at the presentation ceremony at Berekum, Mr Kwasi Attah-Antwi, the Project Co-ordinator of REP, disclosed that so far more than 1,700 graduate apprentices had been supported with start-up kits worth about GH¢30,000, and that 34 project districts had taken advantage of it.
Mr Attah-Antwi noted that financial institutions see fresh entrepreneurs including graduate apprentices as inexperienced and high-risk borrowers and so most of the graduates are unable to raise the initial capital for the purchase of the requisite equipment, tools and raw materials to start their businesses.
This accounts for the low percentage of graduates setting up and running their own business enterprises.
The project co-ordinator pointed out that REP seeks to achieve the objective of alleviating poverty through increased income and business development services, technology promotion and support of apprenticeship training, as well as financial services and support to micro enterprises.
He disclosed that the project, since its inception in 2003, had reached out to more than 121,500 people, including 63,500 women with various project services, adding that of the number, more than 61,500 were trained in various community-based skills, small business management, improved production processes, basic engineering skills, operational safety, health and environmental management and banking culture, among others.
In the area of rural financial services, Mr Attah-Antwi indicated that the participating banks had disbursed about GH¢7.2 million credit to support more than 2,600 micro and small enterprises and that loan recovery rate was about 86 per cent.
He further indicated that for the second half of this year, the project would also make available equipment and tools worth about GH¢300,000 to more than 1,200 graduate apprentices to enable them to set up their businesses.
He, therefore, called on all participating districts to take advantage of it.
The Head of the Business Advisory Centre (BAC) of IFAD at Berekum, Miss Yaa Owusu, in her welcoming address, observed that the support to the graduates would result in more businesses being established, which in turn would generate jobs.
“Quite a lot of money has been committed to the programme all in a bid to reduce poverty levels in the country. It is therefore hoped that you will ensure that this investment will not go to waste but apply yourselves fully to the course you have chosen and to take extra care in the use of the equipment and tools to ensure their longer life span”, she advised.