Madam Christiana Carl-Oparebea, former National Chairperson of the Women’s Committee of Trade Union Congress, gave the admonition at a symposium to herald this year's International Women's Day at Yamoransa in the Central Region on Wednesday.

Madam Oparebea who was speaking on the topic “women in the changing world of work: Opportunities for strengthening women enterprise in the informal economy” said that was necessary to their survival in a competitive economy.

The ceremony which was organised by the Centre for Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) was on the global theme, “Women in the changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”.

The participants included hairdressers, seamstress, traders, kenkey sellers, bread sellers and young girls from junior and senior high school.

Madam Oparebea, who is the Director, Centre for National Culture in Cape Coast, encouraged the women to among others, upgrade themselves in the area of service quality, market demands, networking and marketing of their products.

She said it was becoming increasingly clear that challenges in the informal sector would receive much attention from Government if there were more and stronger local level organisations where members continually built their capacities and developed new leaderships.

She noted that many informal worker organisations at the ground level were weak and called for stronger collaborations among themselves and also encouraged the women to join the various informal worker associations.

This, she said would enable them to engage effectively with local and national authorities to have a stronger voice to influence the attainment of better working conditions and services.

Madam Oparebea further admonished the women to engage the services of experts in the industries that they operated, to conduct researches and come out with new ways of improving their businesses.

She admonished the informal worker organisations to encourage their members to patronise a pension scheme, cultivate the habit of regular savings and also save for their old- age.

Professor Akua Britwum, Director of CEGRAD, underscored the dangers faced by female informal sector workers especially market women and petty traders in the course of their work as occupational health and safety measures were non existence.

She noted that women played multiple domestic roles but advised them to show commitment and seriousness towards their work.

Professor Kofi Awusabo-Asare, Director, Department of Geography and Regional Planning, UCC noted that women continued to play significant development roles in various sectors of the economy, but they were often not acknowledged.

Some of the women who spoke to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) complained about the high taxes and interest rates and pleaded with the Government to either remove the taxes or make arrangement for flexible payment of loans.