Women engaged in Shea Butter production in Anateem a community in the Bolgatanga Municipality have resorted to walking over a long distance to a neighboring community to grind broiled shea nuts for processing into shea butter following the breakdown of a grinding mill in their community owned and managed by them.
The group of women numbering about 70 has most members being widows and hence fending for themselves and children through shea butter production. The community is endowed with shea trees and is well known for its resourcefulness in the production of shea butter of which a greater percentage of the population is engaged in aside farming.
President of the Widows Group in the area Rebecca Anatee in an interaction with a1radioonline.com said the group mobilized and communally built a structure to house a milling machine that was given to them by a donor organization Technoserve to aid them in the production of shea butter.
According to her, they operated the grinding mill themselves and only engaged the services of a young man who helped to start the machine each time they needed to use it because it needed some power winding to start.
She however explained that the equipment has been rendered useless for several months after it broke down and needed repairs at a very high cost of one thousand Ghana cedis (Gh¢ 1,000.00) which they could not raise.
“The machine had a fault and we invited some technician to come repair it for us but we could not work on it because we were told a part of the equipment is damaged and needs to be changed but we cannot afford the cost. We tried contributing but we realized that it was just beyond our strength,” Rebecca said.
She added that the situation is affecting them badly since they are compelled to carry the heavy pans of shea nuts on their heads and walk over a long distance to Kandiga for grinding.
She said “Sometimes when you even carry the shea nuts to the other community, you may be compelled to stay there for several hours before it gets to your turn because women in that particular community also use that grinding mill and so they attend to them first before us.”
The situation she noted has thrown a lot of women in the community out of the activity since it has become much more stressful, expensive and time consuming to commute to another community to grind shea nuts.
By: Azongo Albert | A1RADIOONLINE.com | GHANA
