TWO thousand traditional caterers, popularly known as “chop-bar operators” throughout the country are undergoing training in business management, customer service and food safety.
The training programme which started in the Greater Accra Region with the first batch of 200 traditional caterers at the Entrepreneurship Training Institute was to also show the participants the relationship between nutrition and exercise in helping to maintain good health.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Rector of the Institute, Prof. Reginald T.A. Ocansey, said traditional caterers had a role to play in checking obesity, which is rearing its ugly head in the country by beginning to ask their clientele questions as well as providing health tips.
He said when traditional caterers were well trained, they could help in preventing communicable diseases by keeping their environment clean.
That, he said, could encourage more customers to patronise local dishes and contribute meaningfully to the economic growth of the country.
Prof. Ocansey said when the maintenance of good healthy habit was inculcated in the traditional caterers, they could pass it on to the entire population since most Ghanaians patronised the food prepared by traditional caterers.
He advised traditional caterers to stop being in the catering business only to make money but to regard themselves as health agents who served hygienic and nutritious food.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Chief Executive 0fficer of Homefoods Processing and Cannery Limited, Mrs Felicia Twumasi, urged the women to stop using their business capital for weddings and funerals since that could lead to the depletion of their capital.
She, therefore, advised them to inculcate the habits of savings and good record keeping to ensure that they qualified for micro financing to expand their businesses.
Mrs Twumasi also implored them to expand their businesses into related fields instead of moving from one unrelated business to another.
Ms Maureen Erekua Odoi of African Aurora Business Network (AABN), one of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which organised the eating business programme, (eatbiz) in collaboration with Indigenous Caterers Association of Ghana, said the year-long training programme would be conducted in all the regions for the 2,000 caterers who had been selected to help mainstream the catering service into the economic development of the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment