The Ahanta West Municipal Assembly (AWMA) in the Western Region in collaboration with the Business Advisory Center (BAC) has provided both technical and management training programmes for new and existing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Municipality.

The training programmes covered areas like soap making, bead making, baking and confectionery as well as the provision of business management skills for about forty participants within the past six months.

This was made known by Madam Henrietta Mary Eyison, Municipal Chief Executive Officer (MCE) of the AWMA at the first ordinary meeting of the first session of the Assembly.

She said the training programme became necessary to enable the beneficiary SMEs to build on their businesses and also create more job opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth in the Municipality.

Touching on other development issues in the Municipality, the MCE pointed out that the Executive Committee of the Assembly deliberated on reports from the various sub-committees and recommended that the ICT center and library be reconnected to the national grid, replace destroyed windows, repair leaking roof and furnish the library and the ICT center with modern books and computers respectively.

She said the committee also stressed the need for the Assembly to organise sensitization programmes in each quarter by Zonal Councils on the protection and conservation of the Cape-three-Point Forest Reserve, as well as prevent uncontrolled use of land on water ways and provide a platform for all key stakeholders to dialogue on the way forward to ensure safety of lives and property in the Municipality.

According to her, the committee also called for the establishment of strict regulations and lay down modalities to ban the activities of jackpot operators within the Municipality and also the reactivation of the taskforce to deal with the activities of such jackpot operators.

The MCE said the committee also recommended that the Assembly should relocate all tricycle operators near the Agona-Nkwanta Roundabout area to the Light Industrial Area to ensure safety near the roundabout area.

The committee suggested that statutory Planning Committee of the Assembly should collaborate with the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to intensify public education and sensitization on disaster risk management in the Municipality.

The committee further called on the Assembly to improve on its stock of housing units to ease the acute accommodation shortage and take immediate action to forestall any casualty at abandoned school blocks at Egyambra and Nyameyekrom.

"The Assembly should also document all self-help projects through the initiation and completion of appropriate designs and cost estimates to ensure that safety requirements were not compromised,” the committee directed.