Members of the Federation of Professional Trade Associations of Ghana (FEPTAG), one of the umbrella bodies of micro and small business associations in Ghana have benefitted from a two-day capacity building training on Quality Assurance and Data Management held at the Mensvic Grand Hotel in Accra from Wednesday to Thursday.
This was organised by the International Labour Organization under its Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprise (SCORE) initiative in collaboration with the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI) of the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations.
The workshop was also meant among other things to equip SMEs under FEPTAG with a number of SCORE tools that are relevant and applicable to their setting.
The training also formed part of the numerous training projects under Phase III of the SCORE implementation strategy to help businesses become well-positioned for quality standards, ensuring professionalism helping businesses to grow.
The SCORE is designed to support SMEs with 50 to 250 employees operating in identified productive sectors.
In Ghana, the selected sectors are Manufacturing, Agro-Processing, and Hospitality.
Speaking at the training workshop, the National Project Coordinator for ILO SCORE, Mr. Samuel Onoma Asiedu, said the focus of the collaboration with FEPTAG is to help them apply selected tools in the SCORE Methodology to improve upon the productivity and competitiveness of SMEs.
National Project Coordinator for ILO SCORE, Mr. Samuel Onoma Asiedu
“It is evident that the majority of enterprises, of FEPTAG, fall outside the bracket of 50 to 200 employees. The implications are these enterprises are unable to apply some useful content of SCORE Training.
…However, there are a number of tools that are relevant and applicable to their setting; this is the focus of the collaboration that is to apply selected tools in the SCORE Methodology to improve upon the productivity and competitiveness of SMEs under FEPTAG,” Mr. Samuel Onoma Asiedu stated.
He said the training is aimed at strengthening processes towards an effective collaboration with the Federation Professional Trade Associations in Ghana.
“As part of a broad strategy to sustain the implementation of the SCORE in Ghana, the ILO has engaged implementing partners that are equipped with the SCORE methodology to provide training to SMEs. These implementing partners are the MDPI, SCORE Training Solutions Ghana (STSG), the Sekondi-Takoradi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (STCCI), and Hospitality Coaching Consult. FEPTAG is the new addition to this crew,” he said.
On his part, the Director-General of MDPI, Mr. Kweku Odame-Takyi, said the ILO SCORE Training workshop on Quality Assurance and Data Management has enabled participants to learn something that will generate or capacitate SMEs to do things differently for the better.
Director-General of MDPI, Mr. Kweku Odame-Takyi
He also disclosed that about 80% of Ghana’s economy is in the informal sector and that our ability to grow at that sector, our ability to sustain that area would definitely have an impact on the economy of Ghana.
He revealed that the MDPI and the ILO has a long-standing relationship.
“In fact, the government of Ghana and the UN Development Programme started MDPI and they were in partnership for 10 years before the two foreign partners left MDPI to be on its own. But we still have a strong relationship with the ILO.
So when it came to the exit, the logical choice to take over was the MDPI. Since taking over, we have worked to sustain the pace of events and built upon the leverage ILO gave. We are conscious of other partners and we pledge to work with them. We believe that small trainings like these will help us sustain the business to grow and become more productive,” noted the MDPI Director-General.
