Employ more women in Eco Brigade project…Akua Dansua pleads with Zoil

The Minister of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), Madam Akua Sena Dansua, has called on the authorities of Zoil Ghana Limited to employ more women under its Eco Brigade project, which seeks to protect the beaches along the coastal and inland water bodies of the country.

“Ensure that gender is played safe. Pay particular attention to women in helping them gain employment in the project. When women have equal access to job, education, and other opportunities, they become a key driving force against poverty. Empowerment of women also reduces maternal and child mortality, enhances productivity, and therefore contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” she said.

Madam Akua Sena Dansua was speaking at the national launch of the Inland Water Project by Zoil Ghana Limited at Kpando-Tokor in the Volta Region last Friday.

According to her, women and children bear the brunt of the negative effects of environmental degradation as a result of deforestation, poor sanitation and oil spillage, and therefore it would be prudent to offer them more employment opportunities to improve their standard of living.

She said job creation and livelihood empowerment programs were a priority of the government, and therefore welcomed partnerships from the private sector to help the government achieve its aim of improving the living conditions of the poor.

Expressing worried over rural-urban migration, especially from the three northern regions, the Minister urged ZoomLion, Zoil Ghana, and all its subsidiary companies, to come out with innovative skills training and other alternative livelihood schemes that would take the youth off the streets.

She again urged ZoomLion to help establish cheap-zones, market courts and recreational centers in all the districts in the country, as part of its social responsibility.

This, she believed, would help improve the living standards of the poor in the country.

Madam Sena Dansua however entreated those employed under the project, to work very hard towards its sustainability.

The Manager of Zoil Services Limited, Mr. S.A Opoku Manu, said his outfit, in partnership with the various fishermen's councils, would work assiduously to check any oil spillage into the country's water systems from its emerging oil industry.

According to him, 3,000 people from the fishing communities on the coast in the Western and Central regions, were undergoing orientation, and would start work very soon.

Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, in a short remark, welcomed the initiative by Zoil Services Limited as an important means through which the company would support the government's efforts to rid the country of filth, and make it the number one tourism destination in Africa.

He was grateful for the extension of the Eco Brigade project to cater for the protection and safeguarding of the country's inland water resources, and promised his outfit's unflinching support to the project.

The Eco Brigade is a public private partnership project, which aims at recruiting 10,000 people from the fish landing points and fishing villages along the coast of Ghana, from the border with Togo to the border with Cote d'Ivoire, and the inland water bodies of the country, especially the Volta Lake.

The recruits will clean the various landing points and beaches on a daily basis, and also plant trees, mangroves and coconuts along the aforementioned areas.