TORGOME WOMEN UNDERTAKE ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT (PAGE 11)

Women in the Torgome Traditional Area near Akuse in the North Tongu District are engaged in an environmental protection project to manage the threat of floating aquatic weeds in the Volta basin to restore its vegetation to conserve biodiversity.
It is to equip the women with usable skills to improve on their living conditions and offer training and empowerment, while conserving the environment.
A local NGO, Witlov, which is involved in assisting women to acquire skills, has, accordingly, launched a project at Torgome to boost the morale of the women to use resources in their environment judiciously for a living.
The Chief Executive of Witlov, Mrs Ethel Mac Harrison, said other financially viable and environmentally safe projects, including the cultivation of mango, cassia, acacia and moringa plantations and vegetable farms along the banks of the Volta, formed part of the project.
She said the women would also be taught to create cage aquaculture to produce tilapia and its fingerlings.
"Due to the construction of the Akosombo and the Kpong dams, the growth of floating water weeds threaten the livelihood of the people, making the river inaccessible," she noted, but observed that "these disadvantages can be turned into organic manure to fertilise agricultural land when cleared".
Mrs Harrison said the NGO researched and realised that communities along the banks of the Volta River depended on the river for food but they were engaged in crude methods and hazardous environmental practices.
She outlined some of those methods as the use of chemicals in fishing, farming very closer to the river banks, sand winning at the river banks and depositing waste into the river and along the banks.
Mrs Harrison noted that as the communities along the river banks tried to harness those resources, they over-exploited them, causing massive degradation of the river, threatening the existence of the resources on which they depended for their livelihood and survival.
She said the over-exploitation had led to threats from the weeds which needed to be managed before any beneficial project could start and, therefore, appealed to the people to help alleviate the challenges facing them and other settlements in the Torgome area to conserve biodiversity of the Volta River.
Mrs Harrison petitioned traditional leaders to set up measures and regulations to mitigate those bad environmental practices.
She expressed her gratitude to the UNDP/GEF for assisting in making the project possible and commended clan leaders and citizens who had made land available to facilitate the project to stand by it and ensure that it went on smoothly because the people of the community were the beneficiaries.
She hoped they would not do anything that would hinder the future of the project and make it a model worth emulating in the area.
Mrs Harrison disclosed that Witlov had, for the past six years, been in partnership with women in the local communities to improve their lives and also lead decent lives.
She said the organisation had been able to recruit 120 women to involve them in the project at Torgome, with some men showing interest.
Mrs Harrison remarked that women could be very industrious and, therefore, they should not consider themselves as inferior to men.
She said the NGO was setting up a home for street girls and trying to entice the young women who indulged in excesses in the streets to undergo reformation at the home.
She was optimistic that continuous advocacy by women organisations would yield results in the future because it was a gradual process.