By Robert Tachie Menson
Ahyiresu (B/R), March 26, GNA – BOK Africa Concern, a Berekum-based non-government organisation, has handed over a-gari processing factory to the Ahyiresu farming community in the Dormaa Municipality of the Bono Region.
The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMP) under its SIPABS initiative supported the NGO to build the factory, which would enable local gari women processors to produce more, expand their economic activities and enhance their socio-economic livelihoods.
Under the initiative, the NGOs are implementing two projects titled “Strengthening Border and Migration Management (SMMIG)” and Strengthening Border Security (SBS) in selected border communities in the Bono and Bono East Regions.
The projects are being funded by the European Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF) and sought to promote dialogue and active collaboration between communities, civil society and traditional authorities, and institutions for enhanced border management and security systems.
Speaking at a handing over ceremony, held at Ahyiresu, Nana Baffour Kwadwo Damoah Oseakwan, the chief of the farming community, appealed to entrepreneurs and investors to capitalize on the conducive business climate in the area and invest there.
He said the community was open and the people were ever ready to welcome investors, both local and foreign, and entrepreneurs with ambition to build factories and set up businesses that would create job opportunities for the youth in the area.
Nana Oseakwan said access lands were not an issue at all, saying the community had earmarked lands for businesses and industrialization and thanked the NGO and its partners for the facility and appealed to them to also facilitate the operationalization of a maize milling facility in the area.
The chief also called on the NGO to redeem its promise to provide a tricycle to support the operations of the gari processing factory.
Mr Benson Osei Savio Boateng, the Executive Director, BOK Africa Concern, said his organisation had undertaken a series of campaigns against irregular migration among the youth in migration prone communities in the Bono and Bono East Regions.
Some of the communities include Nkoranza and Techiman in Bono East and the Gonokrom and Kwameseikrom, border communities in the Bono region.
The campaign mostly centered on creating awareness of the dangers and risks associated with irregular migration and human trafficking.
Mr Boateng said he had also helped some migrant returnees to establish income generating vocations for their successful re-integration in society.
He said the NGO would install a solar power plant that would provide a sustainable energy supply for the factory.
GNA