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The Youth and Women Empowerment (YOWE), a non-governmental organisation in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, last Thursday organised a clean-up at the Agormanya Market, with a call on the stakeholders to make it a monthly exercise to keep the market clean always.
The exercise, which was in collaboration with the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly, the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Zoom Lion Company and the Agormanya Market Women Association (AMWA) and other collaborators, was initiated by Action for Voice Influence and Inclusive Development (AVID) Project with sponsorship from STAR-Ghana.
The AVID Project has three main component areas with emphasis on the economic empowerment of market women and how they should cater for the environmental conditions in the Agormanya Market as well as the Asesewa Market in the Upper Manya Krobo District.
The AVID Project also empowers people with disability (PWD) to manage their businesses well and lastly the project also gives support to small women farmholders to form cooperatives on their own.
As part of activities to attain and achieve the intended result of the project, YOWE, has facilitated a monthly clean-up exercise at the Agormanya and Asesewa markets all aimed to ensure that the two markets are always clean to befit their status as the leading markets in the Eastern Region and the country at large.
The Chief Executive Officer of YOWE, Emmanuel Nuertey Siakwa, said his organisation realised that sanitation was a major challenge in Ghana, especially in our markets, which normally results in sicknesses and food poisoning among others of which we as Ghanaians could manage those health-related issues ourselves.
The Secretary to the Agormanya Market Queenmothers Association, Patience Ababio, in an interview with the Daily Graphic after the clean-up exercise, noted with concern that even though the Agormanya Market was 51 years old, it lacked social amenities that would help the market to grow.
“I can say with authority that apart from the Asesewa Market, which is one of the oldest markets in the country and in Manya Krobo, the Agormanya Market also in Manya Krobo is also old enough to have social amenities such as places of convenience, urinal, crèche, a Community Health-Based Planning Services (CHPS) compound among others.
“The population of people who patronise the market is not less than 4,000 on each market day on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
We are mostly women in the market and it becomes very difficult and uncomfortable for us as far as women’s needs are concerned during market days,” the secretary to the market queens lamented.
She, therefore, called on the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly which directly benefits from the market tolls to help solve the problems of the market.
An Assistant Director from the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly, Michael Tetteh Kwameh, who represented the assembly, lauded all the stakeholders who willingly participated in the clean-up exercise.
