Ghana is on course

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah

GHANA is on course to attaining universal primary education, the second goal of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
According to the Ghana Shadow Report on MDGs, conducted by the Global Call for Action Against Poverty, the introduction of the Capitation Grant and the school feeding programme by the government has put Ghana in a position to attain the goal two of the MDGs.
However, it said the number of pupils who moved to the junior and senior schools were identified to be very low.
The shadow report looks at each of the MDGs, interventions made by the government and how citizens view government’s efforts towards the goals.
It is also a representation of the state of the country with regards to the attainment of the eight MDGs.
At the launch of the Ghana Shadow Report on MDGs in Accra, the Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Mr J. H. Mensah, tasked the country to go beyond the MDGs.
He said all the MDGs were attainable and served as key objectives in the planning and implementation of global national development efforts.
Mr Mensah noted that universal education was not enough if it did not correspond with quality education.
He said the government’s efforts at eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education at all levels by 2015 was on course and added that women were at the forefront in governance.
He called on developing countries not to over-depend on international communities and said developing countries should rather strive to learn to fish for themselves.
The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, the Most Reverend Dr Robert Aboagye Mensah, said Ghanaians must not view MDGs as an individual achievement but as a collective tool that was important for poverty eradication.
A lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana, Prof. Clara Fayorseh, said there was the need for greater awareness to be created on the MDGs to facilitate citizens’ involvement in the attainments of the goals.
The report revealed that though Ghana had enjoyed relatively good partnership with the international community, most international policies did not favour the growth of the economy.
The report also stated that in the midst of high enrolment, there was poor teacher to pupils ratio that was compounded by poor teaching facilities in the rural areas.
The report recommended that civil society organisations must harness their efforts to monitor and hold government accountable in order to facilitate the attainments of the goals.

Gov’t encourages ICT

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah

THE government is developing a system for ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to share operational systems that perform common functions.
According to the Minister of
Communications, Dr Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, the system,  known as the ‘shared services infrastructure’, would ensure the provision of more efficient and cost-effective services to the MDAs.
He made this known at the 6th Digital Government Summit (DGS) held in Accra.
The summit brought together heads of government, executive directors, district chief executives and district information officers to inform, educate and share ideas on information, communication and technology (ICT) in public service.
Speaking on creating digital dividends for the government, Dr Ntim said the government was monitoring the development of a common architecture to help break down barriers in communication.
He said ICT would facilitate transactions, increase public sector efficiency and transparency as well as grant citizens access to public services by making them available online.
“ICT will be a pivotal tool to improve governance, accountability and transparency, develop human resource potential and strengthen national unity,” he added.
As a result, he said, his ministry was expediting the passage of e-legislation to protect the communication sector and also establish Ghana as a safe place for ICT to enable people to take advantage of the opportunities for development.
The Minister for Public Sector Reform, Mr Samuel Owusu-Agyei, in a speech read on his behalf, he urged Ghanaians to harness the potential of ICT to transform the country to an information-rich society.
He observed that information technology was neither a luxury nor an option, but was an integral component of public sector reform.
He said the quest to entrench good governance and the rule of law in the country faced severe challenges from the narrowness of the national database, noting that after 50 years of independence, the registration of births and deaths covered only one-quarter of the population.
He explained that he cited the births and death registration to illustrate the situation that permeated all parts of the public sector.
The Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence, Mrs Dorothy Gordon, said the introduction of ICT in schools must inculcate in the youth an aptitude for information management if they were to constitute the skilled workforce of a future knowledge-based economy.

net right

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah & Hagar Korantemaa
THE Paris  Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness has not taken into account human rights issues, gender equality and women’s empowerment, a Steering Committee member of the Network for Women’s Right in Ghana (Netright), Ms Kathy Cusack, has said.
That, she said, had led to the absence of gender indicators to measure progress in line with international instruments.
The PD is an agreement signed in 2005 by donor and recipient countries to reform the delivery and management of aid money in order to strengthen its impact and effectiveness.
Netright, an NGO committed to women’s rights issues in the country, made this known at a day’s consultation on gender and aid effectiveness in Accra.
Ms Cusack said the declaration was based on five principles, which were: Ownership, harmonisation, alignment, managing for results and mutual accountability .
“These principles in the PD are major reference points for shaping policy dialogues and shaping development co-operation in all sectors,” she added.
She said the PD was being adhered to by approximately 25 donor countries, 80 recipient countries and around 25 multilateral institutions.
Having analysed the principles of the PD, she noted that African women, who represented more than 50 per cent of the population, played minimal roles in the socio-economic development of their countries.
She said aid could not be effective if it did not lead to sustainable development and wondered how aid was disbursed and managed by the government.
Ms Cusack observed that the sector budget support focused on narrowly defined investments in women and girls, instead of addressing wider social relations that created unequal access to health, education and agriculture.
A representative of the African Women Development Fund, Ms Sarah Kassa, said in spite of the numerous contributions by African women, they received little support in terms of development.
She said though Ghana was a great aid-dependent country, its maternal mortality was estimated to be 503 deaths per 100,000 live births, with regional variations as high as 600 to 800 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Ms Kassa said available reports showed that rural women in Africa were responsible for half of the world’s food production, noting that “women’s agricultural work includes farming, food processing and selling in markets”.
However, she said what was needed was a global consensus to make trade policy making to be informed by human rights commitment, instead of using human rights as imposed conditions in trade relations.
The Convenor of Netright, Dr Rose Mensah-Kutin, said the one-day consultation was to deepen the knowledge of women and women’s groups on the PD and aid effectiveness, particularly the gender implications of the five PD principles.
She said women should be empowered economically to enable them to earn income through viable ventures to reduce the level of poverty among women.
“Our vision is for African women to live in a world in which there is social justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights,” Dr Mensah-Kutin stated.

facing maternal challenges

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah
Maternal mortality remains one of the major health challenges that retard the human resource development of the country.
Although the current martenal mortality ratio is unknown, it is estimated to be between 214 and 540 per 100,000 live births.
Between 2006 and 2007, institutional maternal mortality was 197/100,000 live births.
The maternal mortality ratio indicates the risk of death a woman faces with each pregnancy. In settings with high fertility, such as sub-Saharan Africa, women face this risk many times in their lifetime.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the probability that a 15-year-old girl will die from a complication related to pregnancy and childbirth during her lifetime is highest in Africa: 1 in 26.
Statistics indicates that about 585,000 maternal deaths occur globally every year, and 99 per cent of these deaths are in developing countries.
Such deaths, are  as a result of unsafe abortion, pregnancy-related complications and unplanned  or unwanted pregnancy by women.

To achieve MDG 5 and reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters before 2015, improving health care for women and providing universal access to reproductive health services must be prioritised. This includes access to family planning, prevention of unplanned pregnancies and provision of high-quality pregnancy and delivery care, including emergency obstetric care.
While an annual decline of 5.5 per cent in maternal mortality ratios between 1990 and 2015 is required to achieve MDG 5, figures released by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank show an annual decline of less than one per cent. In 2005, 536,000 women died of maternal causes, compared to 576,000 in 1990. Ninety-nine per cent of these deaths occurred in developing countries.
The maternal mortality ratio in 2005 was highest in developing regions, with 450 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, in stark contrast to 9 in developed regions and 51 in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Experts on reproductive health have painted a bleak picture of maternal and child health in Africa and warned that the situation could worsen in the next decade if no immediate remedial actions were taken by African governments and development partners.
According to a WHO-sponsored study made available at a regional workshop on improving maternal and neonatal health in Zimbabwe, neonatal morbidity and mortality rates is currently estimated at 45 deaths per 1,000 live births and contribute about 50 per cent of the infant mortality rate in the regions.
“Only 42 per cent of births in the African region are attended by skilled personnel,” an expert at the regional conference on maternal and new-born health in Zimbabwe revealed. Unsafe abortions are also high among adolescents, according to him.
“The percentage of gross domestic product devoted to health in sub-Saharan Africa remains at between one percent and 3.7 per cent compared to the large percentage spent on arms,” they conveyed.
“If nothing is done to arrest the trend (of high and growing maternal and child deaths), it is estimated that there will be 2.5 million maternal deaths, 2.5 million child deaths and 49 million maternal disabilities in the region over the next 10 years”, Prof. Joseph Kasonde noted.
He states that more than half of the 600,000 women who die every year from pregnancy-related causes were in the African region which constitutes only 12 per cent of the world’s population and 17% of its births. Maternal mortality ratio in Africa remains the highest in the world with the average actually increasing from 870 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 1,000 per 100,000 live births in 2001.

In response to the aforementioned factors militating against the attainment of the MDG 5, the Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah  at a recent Health Summit held in April this year, declared martenal mortality an emmergency issue in the country.
He has, therefore, inaugurated a task team to ensure the reduction of maternal mortality.
The task team would mobilise additional resources for maternity care,
identify areas for technical support to strengthen implementation actions for the reduction of maternal mortality, define milestones for the implementers to reduce maternal deaths and monitor progress being made in the reduction of maternal mortality in the country.
The health minister tasked the team to focus on the strategies to ensure that the country doubled the coverage of supervised deliveries from the current low level of 35 per cent to 70 per cent.
He said ensuring that women delivered in a safe environment and by competent health professionals was a human rights issue.
“It is also a developmental issue since that is the only way we can ensure that we have healthy and productive Ghanaian population,” he said.
Major Quashigah observed that Ghana’s high maternal mortality rate could be reduced if the greater proportion of pregnant women were delivered by trained midwives.
He said the current supervised delivery coverage of 35 per cent was unacceptably low.
He expressed worry that although the situation was a major problem in Africa, few African countries had developed comprehensive polices and instituted national programmes in that direction.
He said the risk of maternal deaths posed both medical and social problems that could be effectively tackled in a developmental context.
However, he noted that health services can only help when women were able to make use of them explaining that when obstetric emergencies arose during pregnancy and delivery, the importance of recognising danger signs and seeking care quickly was critical.
Major Quashiga added that the President was committed to making deliveries free at the various health facilities through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
Specifically, he said, “ We will exempt pregnant women from paying NHIS premiums. We will also waive the up to six month mandatory waiting period under the NHIS to enable pregnant women enjoy free services”.
A member of the task team for the maternal mortality, Mrs Virginia Ofusu-Amoah, said the team would work closely with the Ministry of Health to monitor the progress being made in the reduction in maternal mortality in the country.
Mrs Ofosu-Amoah who is also the chairperson of the National Population Council observed that socio-cultural barriers prevented access to maternity services and created delays at the community levels, adding that the team would ensure that the maternal mortality was reduced.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Abraham Odoom, for his part said it was important to train quality midwives to enable the country to meet its Millennium Development Goals before 2015.
Mr Odoom said about 40 midwives from the University for Development Studies would be sponsored to Israel for training to enable them to acquire skills in health delivery.
The country’s efforts to reduce maternal mortality received a major boost when on July 1st, His Excellency the President declared maternal care including deliveries free at point of service delivery.
With this policy, which is being implemented through the National Health Insurance Scheme, Ghanaians are expecting to hear good news when women go to the labour wards.
However, this policy  is unlikely to be sufficient to double supervised deliveries by 2010 if we do not implement concurrent strategies.
The majority of these deaths are among the poor and un-educated women. Empowering them will ensure that they make informed decisions about when to seek help without waiting endlessly for the man to come back from work before the woman is taken to the hospital.
Additionally, most of these women need prenatal check-ups and immediate treatment of diseases like malaria and anaemia. In addition to having a skilled attendant during delivery, it is also important for women with complications to reach emergency obstetric care services in time.
There is the need to sensitise men to get more involved in maternal health.
There is also the need for government to support traditional birth attendants in rural places in Africa and to increase resources for reproductive health.
It is hoped that the free delivery policy will reduce the financial barriers that women face particularly those in the Brong-Ahafo region (the hardest hit region) in accessing health services.

pery-operative

Story: Jasmine Afari-Minah & Hagar Korantemaa
Forty-two nurses have been equipped with specialised skills and the capacity to assist at the various theatres and recovery wards in the country.
They will particularly support doctors at the post-anaesthetic care and intensive care units at both  government and quasi-government institutions across the country.
The nurses, who were drawn from the various health institutions in the country, underwent 15 months’ intensive training at the School of Peri-operative and Critical Care Nursing at Korle-Bu.
In a speech read on his behalf at the graduation of the nurses, the Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Abraham Dwumoh Odoom, appealed to the nurses to strive to change the negative perceptions the public had about health workers by doing their work diligently and humanely.
He said it was important for nurses to make use of the knowledge acquired by contributing their quota to the development of the country.
Mr Odoom said the Health Ministry had always prided itself on having high standards of health training in its institutions all over the country, supported by excellent practical training schemes.
In addition to that, he noted, the ministry had installed anatomical software on computers at all the health training institutions in the country.
He urged tutors of nursing and midwifery training schools to teach communication skills to  significantly improve the communication skills of health workers, particularly  provider-client relationships.
The Co-ordinator of the programme, Mr Kwaku Asante-Krobea, said the school admitted registered nurses and registered general nurses with at least three years of post-qualification experience from all health training institutions.
He said though the school had been in existence for 11 years, it still operated from borrowed premises at the Korle-Bu Nurses Training College.
Mr Asante-Krobea said the lack of infrastructure had caused congestion, a situation which worsened every year.
He, therefore, called on the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service to provide infrastructure and other related resources.
The Deputy Registrar, Indexing and Registration of the Nurses and Midwives Council (NMC) , Mrs Cecelia Kalitsi, said  graduates of the school played important roles in the handling of accident victims.
Mrs Kalitsi noted that the NMC had developed a manual on behavioural change communication which would be distributed to all the nursing and midwifery schools in the country.
“ It is the hope of the council that the introduction of these manuals will make a difference in the attitude of the next generation of nurses, while measures are put in place to address that of current practitioners,” she added.

trachoma

Jasmine Afari-Mintah & Sahadatu Atintande
THE Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Abraham Dwumah Odoom, has called for a multi-sectoral approach to the control of trachoma, a major cause of blindness in Ghana.
He, therefore, called on district assemblies and non-governmental organisations in the water and sanitation sector to help provide potable water for trachoma endemic communities.
Mr Odoom was speaking at a press briefing on the dissemination of mid-term review reports of the national trachoma control programme in Accra.
Trachoma is an infectious disease of the eye that causes the eyelashes to rub on the cornea of the eye and it is transmitted by sticky fingers, flies and clothes that have been in contact with an infected eye.
It is found in the Northern the Upper West regions, with more than 11,600 people already blind as a result of damage from repeated trachoma infection.
In Ghana, the control of trachoma is being implemented through the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness and environmental improvement (SAFE) strategy.
According to the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI), an estimated 2.8 million Ghanaians were at risk as of 2000, with more than 13,000 others having trichiasis, the advance stage of the disease.
Mr Odoom said a baseline survey carried out in the two endemic regions between 2000 and 2003 showed that nearly one million people were in need of antibiotic treatment against the disease, adding that a trachoma control programme (TCP) had been in place since 2000 as an effort to eliminate the disease.
He said the targeted year set for the elimination of blinding trachoma was 2010, saying that TCP had developed a five-year strategic plan to guide trachoma control activities.
“Last year marked the midpoint of the five-year plan. By that time all endemic communities would have received at least three years of SAFE interventions,” he added.
He noted that towards the end of 2007, the country had cleared over 4,542 trachoma cases through restorative surgeries, adding that there were still about 5,000 cases to be treated.
“This great achievement gives us hope that we can eliminate trachoma by 2010 because the coverage has consistently remained over 80 per cent,” he remarked.
As a result, he said, the prevalence of active trachoma was less than three per cent, which was lower than the WHO target for elimination which states that the prevalence should be less than five per cent in children between the ages of one and nine.
Mr Odoom hinted that there had been an increase in the intake of nurses in the country from 968 to 7,065 between 2000 and 2007.
The President of ITI, Mr Ibrahim Jabr, commended Ghana for making progress in the elimination of trachoma.
He said Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to have shown ownership in trachoma control and great leadership to the rest of the endemic countries in Africa and the world that the SAFE strategy worked.
Mr Jabr said the ITI had provided technical and financial support to aid the TCP to achieve its objectives in the SAFE strategy.
“The ITI, together with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and other partners, has brought relief to 4, 500 people, many of them women who were suffering from trichiasis,” he said.
The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias Sory, said though the country had made great strides towards trachoma elimination, there was still more to be done.
He reiterated the fact that there were 5,000 trichiasis cases to be operated upon before declaring that the country had achieved the goals of preventing blindness.
“Trachoma is a disease of the poor and it pushes them much deeper into poverty. Let’s make sure that every Ghanaian has hope for a better future by ensuring that trachoma becomes a disease of the past,” Dr Sory said.

burns

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah
GHANA is in dire need of plastic surgeons, as the country can boasts only eight plastic surgeons operating in Accra and Kumasi.
Four of the plastic surgeons operate at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, one at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra and the other three at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi.
Two of the eight surgeons are said to be on retirement but have been compelled, under the circumstance, to return to post to assist the six who are in active service.
The Ghana Burn Association (GBA) has, therefore, appealed to the government to train more plastic surgeons to meet the increasing demand of plastic surgery in the country.
The association made the call at the opening of a three-day national conference on burn injuries in Accra.
The conference, which is on the theme, “Prevention and Management of Burns in Ghana: Are We Doing It Right?”, was also used to officially launch the GBA.
The First Ghana National Burn Conference was jointly organised by the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burn Centre, Korle-Bu, and the International Reconstructive Plastic Surgery Project.
The Director of the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burn Centre, Mr Albert Paintsil, said it was important to  sensitise the government to train more plastic surgeons to improve their service delivery.
That, he pointed out, informed the decision of the surgeons to educate Ghanaians on the importance of primary and secondary burn construction, as well as some of the factors that accounted for fire outbreaks in homes and workplaces, in order to guard against them.
Mr Paintsil explained that fires usually occurred unexpectedly and so it was important that people took fire alerts seriously at all times.
He called on Ghanaians to respond rapidly any time an alarm was raised because “hazard can befall us at any time”.
A consultant plastic surgeon at Korle-Bu, Mr Opoku Ware Ampomah, who spoke on behalf of the GBA, said there were only two plastic and burn centres in the country.
He said burns received little attention, unlike other diseases, citing HIV/AIDS and malaria as examples.
Mr Ampomah said statistics showed that people of low socio-economic status were more prone to burns and that being conscious of such issues would help the public to take precautions to reduce fire outbreaks.
He said fire education campaigns should be taken to schools, marketplaces, churches and industries in order to minimise further the incidence of fire outbreaks.
“We are also making concerted efforts to sensitise the general public to fire precaution regulations and also meet our target for the year 2008,” he noted.
According to him, there were only 18 beds for burn patients at Korle-Bu, noting that there were six each for males, females and children.
He said some of their patients sometimes slept on benches because of the limited facilities at the various hospitals, adding that people who had suffered injuries from burns felt uncomfortable sleeping on benches.
Mr Ampomah appealed to the government and NGOs to support the centres which lacked good facilities.
.

‘Extend insurance coverage to PLWAS’

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah & Esther Dede Tetteh
The President of the Society for Women And AIDS (SWAA), Mrs Cecilia Lodonu-Senoo, has appealed to the government to provide health insurance coverage for People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWAs).
She, therefore, called on the government to integrate Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to make it more accessible for PLWAs.
She was speaking at an advocacy meeting with some parliamentarians in Accra yesterday to deliberate on HIV/AIDS funding.
Ghana has an  HIV population of about 268,000 out of which 70,000 are supposed to be on ART but at the moment only 14,793 people are able to access the drug, 14,182 of whom are adults against 611 children.
Mrs Lodonu-Senoo said government policy ought to include free ART’s nationwide, since most of the PLWAs found it difficult to purchase the drug, which was being sold for GH¢5.
As a result, she said it was important for the government to effectively execute projects that would enhance the quality of lives of PLWAs.
She noted that in spite of the attempts to integrate sexual and reproductive health (SRH) with HIV/AIDS services, policies and programmes continued to treat them as unrelated areas of intervention.
“For Ghana the need for integration of SRH to HIV/AIDS is further enforced by the fact that the population of the country has the majority in the reproductive age,” she said.
Invariably, she added that those in the reproductive age continued to be the most affected by the HIV menace considering the fact that heterosexual transmission accounted for 80 per cent of HIV infection in the country.
Mrs Ledonu-Senoo advocated that government policies and funding for HIV/AIDS projects should insist on SRH integration to ensure that success was obtained.
She proposed that the integration of such programmes must be specific in major proposals to ensure that family planning issues were addressed during their implementation.
The Member of Parliament for Wa Central, Mr Rashid Pelpuo, said though the national rate of infection had been held down at 1.9 per cent, there was still room for improvement as the disease  constituted a major challenge to the nation’s economic and social development.
Under the circumstances, he urged the Ghanaians to take active part in awareness and advocacy programmes, since it was only through this means that the general public would learn and gain an understanding of the disease.

encourage tree planting

story: Jasmine Comfort Afari-Mintah
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Minerals Commission, Mr Ben Aryee, has encouraged Ghanaians to nurture the habit of planting trees to preserve the environment.
“For us to have good vegetation and forests, we must know the benefits of planting trees, as well as the protection and conservation of the environment,” he stated.
Mr Aryee made the speech when the Labone Seventh Day Adventist Church ( SDA) and the Bethel SDA embarked on a tree-planting exercise on Republic Day.
The churches planted about 40 eukaria (Christmas trees) along the median of the Dankwa Circle-La dual carriageway.
He said God created trees for human beings to care for them, adding that oxygen was from trees for respiration.
Mr Aryee said trees were very important, since they provided shade and also served as windbreaks, medicinal purposes, and must therefore be preserved.
He made a strong case for the neem tree as a viable pest control measure for crops like cocoa and other cash crops that the country depended on economically.
The District Pastor of the Accra East District of the SDA Church, Pastor Nathaniel Teye Odonkor, explained that the church was very concerned about the degradation of the environment.
He said his church considered tree planting as a means of contributing to the preservation and protection of the environment.
He urged Ghanaians to tolerate ethnic groups other than their own and diverse views from the society at this critical time when general election was near.
He said peace was the most important thing a nation needed to develop and added that the election would be peaceful if the nation committed itself to prayer.
Pastor Odonkor said for the nation to move forward, Ghanaians needed to love one another, show concern for one  another and tolerate and co-operate with one another.
The Chairman of the Fields and Operation Team of the Parks and Gardens, Mr Charles Okine, lauded the two churches for their efforts, saying that it was time Ghanaians took tree planting seriously, since when the last tree dies, the last man dies.
Mr Okine entreated non-governmental agencies and other organisations to emulate the gesture as a way of ensuring that more trees were planted across the country.

First Lady launches Zoom Captains

Story: Jasmine Afari-Mintah

THE First Lady, Mrs Theresa Kufuor, has called on private companies to fashion pro-poor strategies targeted at poor and underprivileged women to enable them to earn higher incomes.
She noted that when women had careers and specialised skills it reduced the poverty level, thereby empowering them to fend for themselves and their families.
Mrs Kufuor was speaking at the launch of the “ Zoom Captains” in Accra yesterday.
The Zoom Captains, a concept of the Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL), is a programme designed to upgrade the skills of 30 selected women from the 10 regions of the country.
The programme also seeks to offer opportunities to women to earn higher income.
The selected women had six months of practical training in the driving of big trucks and the operation of heavy-duty machinery.
Mrs Kufuor commended the ZGL for helping to improve the economic conditions of Ghanaian women.
“ It is against this background that I am quite happy that the Zoomlion is assisting the nation in its quest to further reduce poverty,” she said.
She said the women, who were sweepers and cleaners, had risen through the ranks to become heavy duty truck operators which would give them the confidence to make their voices heard on general issues of life.
She observed that women who had no jobs and income lived under deplorable conditions and were not recognised by society even when they had good contributions to make.
According to the first lady, these women needed the support and trust of their male counterparts as well as stakeholders in order to ensure that the concept was sustained.
Mrs Kufuor urged private companies and civil society groups to assist the government in its quest to sustain the gains made in poverty reduction and to further improve upon it.
The General Manager of  ZGL, Mrs Florence Larbi, said the company had brought a change in the management of waste.
She said ZGL had a vision of offering equal opportunities of employment to both females and males since  the implementation of the sanitation module of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP).
Mrs Larbi said  ZGL selected 30 female motorised tricycle riders from the NYEP for  them to be trained in the operation of heavy duty trucks to enhance their status in life.
With this achievement, she said “ We are happy to say that these women have broken the myth surrounding male dominance in the operation of heavy-duty machinery in the country.”
She appealed to civil society organisations and assembly members to be actively involved in the collection of waste in their respective communities.
Mrs Larbi noted that the concept was aimed at helping build women role models for younger women to learn from.
She said 25 of the women, out of the 30, had been duly licensed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).
She said the company’s doors were opened to all women, particularly female hawkers and porters (kayayei), to equip them with practical training.