Market women schooled on MDF

A one-day capacity building workshop on Mineral Development Fund (MDF) for selected market women in Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality has ended.

In all, thirty market women attended the programme organized by Friends of the Nation (FoN), a Non-Governmental Organization with funding from STAR-Ghana.

Mrs Nana Efua Ewur, the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator, said with Tarkwa being a mining area, the workshop was designed to enlighten the market women on how they can benefit fully from the MDF.

Mrs Ewur said similar programme has been held for Person's With Disabilities (PWD's) in the municipality.

Topics that were discussed at the training include, positive and negative impacts on mining and recommendations for maximizing the positive and address the negatives, disbursement of Mineral Development Fund and opportunities for market women and designing an advocacy strategy to derive maximum benefits from mineral revenues.

She said FoN was implementing a 12-month project on promoting social accountability in the utilization of public resources through citizens participation.

Mrs Ewur said the project centers on building innovative relationships with the MDF Board and the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection by influencing these institutions to raise more support for PWD's and also lobby for additional mineral revenues for women and vulnerable groups.

The Monitoring and Evaluation coordinator said the project would join forces with other STAR-Ghana grantees for joint advocacy and leveraging on their gains for bigger results at the national level.

It would also generate critical information, knowledge and evidence by documenting and sharing lessons, good practice and innovations with other civil society and state actors as a basis of an informed, evidence-based position, Mrs Ewur said.

At the end of the project, she said that FoN expects the assembly to provide 30 PWD's with vocational training and inputs for start-up business, construct six improved market sheds, ensure weekly collection of garbage in the markets by waste management service providers and ensure proper sanitary conditions in three markets within the Municipality.

Mrs Ewur said although the Tarkwa Nsuaem Assembly was putting in place effective measures to address challenges of market women, there is the need for the traders to collaborate and work to find permanent solutions to issues affecting them.

Madam Beatrice Doodo, Market Queen at Tarkwa central market expressed optimism that the programme would be beneficial to them.