By Archibong Jeremiah
The Cross River State Government in partnership with Bank of Industry has concluded plans to fund women in Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SMSE) as well as train women on the art of bag and shoe making.
The disclosure was made by the State Commissioner for Women Affairs, Mrs. Stella Odey in an exclusive interview with CrossRiverWatch TV.
In her words, “Our vision and mission is to see how to emancipate women socially, politically and economically”.
She revealed that her Ministry has coordinated sensitization programs to make them know the numbers of projects Government has to enhance their well being.
“Right now we have a great number of these women Cooperative Societies. We are partnering with the Bank of Industry to see that these Cooperative Societies are well funded to enable them carry out Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMSE)”.
She further revealed that, “A training/skill acquisition workshop would be coming up soon where we will teach people the art of show and bag making including snickers making for both sexes. We will see how to create value chain the products of these women, there must be value chain to see that at the end of the day we create market for them as well”.
According to her, economically, the Ministry empowers women with similar business interest which in time past could not access funds from financial institution because of lack of collateral and securities to form themselves into Cooperative Societies thereby enabling them to access funds.
“A data bank has been set up to get them exposed at any time to funding in all ramifications. The political and economic mission of the Ministry is interwoven. We empower women economically to enable them source for funding to pursue their political ambitions”, she made known.
Concluding she said, “We have been able to sponsor a lot of women to Songhai farms, where they received training to qualify them to receive the cash provision from central bank to enable them establish and revamp their farms”.