Executives of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on Wednesday met with the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) to find out its efforts at addressing the concerns of small scale enterprises. The meeting formed part of the GJA’s project titled; “Using the media to strengthen business advocacy” which is funded by the BUSAC Fund. Mr Kwasi Afriyie Badu, CEO of the KAB Governance Consult, consultants to the GJA, said the purpose of the meeting was to ascertain the problems faced by the Board in the development of the small-scale business sector in terms resources and how stakeholders were reacting to this. He also asked the Board to state the role GJA could play in solving the problem. Mr Bright Blewu, General Secretary of the GJA, noted that the idea of the meeting was to get the media involved in the private sector and that the association was organizing a series of programmes on TV and radio to address this problem. He said the GJA had held a meeting with the Board on 13th October 2006 under a previous project that sought to use the media to articulate the concerns of the small-scale enterprise. “It is only fair to come back to the citadel of the NBSSI to find out results of the previous meeting and also to know what has been done.” Dr Nana Baah Boakye, Executive Director of the NBSSI, said the Board had indeed made progress after the previous consultation with the GJA, attributing it to a series of programmes and initiatives by the Board. He said so far the Board had 110 district offices around the country and this made it possible for them to reach most of their clients since the district offices were the implementing wing of the board. He, however, appealed to the authorities to expand these offices since most of them did not have conference rooms and the Board therefore had to resort to renting places for their programmes. The Executive Director also stated that aside their clients, they engaged in various activities such as honey making and bee-keeping, among other things, which served as a source of income and they also trained people in that field. He said the Board was also working with the European Union and the district assemblies to help some small scale enterprises in selected parts of the country saying that they had already identified the groups. Dr Boakye reiterated that a problem faced by the Board was the inability of individuals in the small scale sector to keep records and save their money in the bank. “They believe that making known their records will show to others their financial background and this has made it difficult for them to access loans,” he added. He also cited the help of external sources such as the EU and the Rural Enterprise Project as being supportive. He appealed to the media to engage entrepreneurs and clients in a dialogue to ascertain their needs so that the Board could address them. Source: GNA