GMC budgets to assist community

Ghana Manganese Company (GMC) has earmarked 1.2 billion cedis for community assistance this year, Mr Jurgen Eijendaal, the Managing Director of the company, has said. Speaking at the community assistance budget hearing at Nsuta-Wassa, he said GMC was following the guidelines of the Ghana Chamber of Mines and was undertaking Sustainable Alternative Livelihood projects.

"The target is to develop a positive environment for people living in mining areas after mining ceases. This is to create a future and a new economic activity for the communities."

Mr Eijendaal said GMC would strive to create wealth for all the people.

Dr. B. Amoako-Atta, Director of the Centre for Biodiversity Utilisation and Development (CBUD), said valuable growth potential was being squandered because of poverty.

He said the plight of farmers was getting worse under deteriorating environmental conditions. "The implications to the future development of their children are really bleak. The future development of children born into such impoverished rural food crop farmers/families is uncertain." He said the strategy for CBUD was to enhance the capacity of such poor parents who in turn would become better resourced to transform their disadvantaged developing children into potentially prosperous persons in the not distant future. The Divisional Chief, Nana Kojo Anomako III, urged chiefs under his division to impress upon the youth to acquire formal education because that was the only way they could contribute to the development of the division.