A five-day training workshop to equip traditional food vendors in Zongo communities with the requisite skills in proper packaging , branding and labelling of food opened in Accra yesterday.
More than 200 women are expected to benefit from the workshop which also aimed at enhancing their capacity to adopt better practices that would go a long way to give value for money and to grow their businesses.
It is being organised by the Ministry of Inner City and Zongo Development in collaboration with the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) and target food vendors within Zongo communities in Ashaiman, Madina and Adenta and other places in the Greater Accra Region.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Inner City and Zongo Development, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, said the workshop was to add value to the local cuisines namely waakye, fula, sobolo, wasawasa, tuozafi and tubani among others.
The minister whose speech was read for him by his Director of Communications, Mr Seibik Bugri, expressed the need for proper marketing, promotion and accessibility of local cuisines that can attract customers.
Dr Abdul-Hamid said his ministry after a further stakeholders’ consultation came to the conclusion that one of the social interventions to the Zongo communities was to help educate the participants to modernise and standardise cooking methods.
” If our local cuisines, especially, waakye in the Zongo communities are properly packaged you would buy it at a better price that would provide more value, create employment and better networking to grow your businesses, “he said.
The Inner City and Zongo Development Minister urged the traditional food vendors to take serious the knowledge they would acquire from the training to enhance their business outlook, marketing and better food preservation.
The Executive Director of the NBSSI, Ms Kosi A. Yankey said the initiative would ensure poverty reduction and improve upon their livelihood.
She said that the workshop would boost the entrepreneurship and production skills of the traditional food vendors in terms of better labelling and distribution of their products.
BY DAVID TAKYI
