James Topp Yankah (left), Founder and Managing Director of Brempton Portfolio Gruop Limited at Nsawam Prison, showing Dr Mahamudu Bawumia the products
Government has issued a new directive for all state-owned institutions to purchase toilet rolls from local manufacturing companies.
The directive takes effect from the beginning of the next procurement cycle.
Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia issued the directive when he visited a toilet roll manufacturing company—Brompton Portfolio—at the Nsawam Prisons in the Eastern Region on Thursday.
The company, which is located in the prison yard with inmates as workers, is part of five new toilet roll manufacturing companies established under government’s ‘One District, One Factory’ (1D1F) initiative.
It, therefore, brings to 14 the number of toilet roll manufacturing companies in the country, with nine already in existence before the New Patriotic Party (NPP) came to power, thereby increasing the production capacity of Ghana to about 50%.
The Vice-President said, “This is very significant, and this is the reason why we have to support the local industry.”
Reason
“What we are now satisfied with is that Ghana now, in fact, has sufficient capacity to meet a large amount of its demand for products like toilet rolls,” he indicated. Continuing, he said, “So we are saying that from the next procurement cycle, all government institutions, whether it is the military, the police, hospitals or schools … if you are going to buy toilet rolls, all must be bought from local manufacturing companies.”
The Vice-President stated that he was confident the decision would engender job creation and foreign exchange to grow the economy.
“The import bill for toilet roll last year alone was $70 million … and we are importing from countries such as Vietnam, Honduras, Panama, Bahamas, Marshall Islands and all over,” he added.
Commitment
The Founder and Managing Director of Brompton Portfolio, James Topp Yankah, vouched for the quality of their products, saying “we are ensuring that 30% of all our profits go towards the rehabilitation of the Ghana Prisons Service, because as we know there are prisons reforms that are needed and these require money.”
“What they need to realise is that we are a company that believes in socio-economic projects; once we get the necessary support, we are also going to support a lot of social courses in Ghana and that’s the objective of this project,” he added.
Dr. Bawumia was accompanied by the Deputy Minister for the Interior, Henry Quartey, and his colleague Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent