More than 200 women who are into palm oil production at Juaso in the Asante Akim North District of the Ashanti Region are set to benefit from the construction of a new building to support their businesses.

The gesture by MTN Ghana Foundation, forms part of its corporate social responsibility.

MTN has invested some GHC200,000 into the construction of the new building and providing new equipment which will offer a more convenient and hygienic way for the women to refine the palm oil.

Acting Corporate Services Executive at MTN Sam Koranteng told Ultimate Business, the project aims to economically empower the women in Juaso.

‘These women who are doing their best in their chosen trade of palm oil production and if you look at the environment in which they work it is quite close to a school, you can see the smoke behind us and the environment in which they work, so the foundation decided to help them, to empower them economically and as you well know when you empower women it impacts a whole family and a whole community so we’ve decided to invest in these women economically by investing two hundred thousand Ghana cedis to relocate them in a new facility which will make it much more hygienic.

We will also provide them with some equipment to help in the processing of the palm oil in a much more efficient way, we would also equip them with management skills to be able to manage what we are putting in to them in the sense that with MTN Foundation every project we engage in we ensure that we have a sustainability element to it that is why we would retrain them because what you see here is a business so as we invest in it to empower them economically, we need to make sure that the business grows and it is sustainable,’ he explained.

On his part, chief of Juaso, Nana Asafoakaa Agyei Tabi I expressed his profound gratitude to the MTN Ghana Foundation for heeding to his call for a new structure.

‘I’m very excited, imagine, because it was a problem for the community as much as the women were making their living out of it, as I said earlier it will also serve as major economic activity for the women in this area especially in this town.

So when we realized the problem it was creating especially where they are currently using in terms of safety of the school children and safety of their own children and the fact that they can also work when it rains, their jobs were subject to the weather so we decided to think about it, we threw ideas around then finally I decided to make an appeal to corporate organizations and fortunately our request to MTN was taken up and they promised to help us, so they came around, looked around, looked at the site, and its barely two months now but you can see its gone very far and very fast. I am very very excited about this whole thing,’ she said.

One of the palm oil producers who also shared her joy with Ultimate Business, said ‘We are excited to be moved from here because there is no shade here, we are at the mercy of the weather, so we hope there is shade at the new place, I haven’t been there personally but our leaders have said the new location is very good although it has not been completed.

We are excited and patiently waiting to move. We are only workers so when we move we hope our market will still be available. We are grateful to MTN for this project we pray that this project would be sustained and our markets increased,’.