Kumasi, Aug. 14, GNA - The Women in Local Governance Fund, set up by the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) this year, to support aspiring women in their campaigns in the district assembly elections had yielded only 101 million cedis out of its target of two billion cedis.

The Ministry has therefore appealed to individuals and organisations to contribute meaningfully towards the fund to help equip aspiring assemblywomen with skills in their campaigns. Hajia Alima Mahama, sector minister, said this in a speech read for her at the opening of a two-day capacity building workshop organised by the MOWAC in Kumasi on Monday.

The workshop being attended by 50 aspiring assemblywomen, aims among others at equipping them with skills to enable them to campaign and participate in the decision-making process at the local governance level.

Topics being treated included the Ghana local governance system, importance of women's participation in local governance, elections campaign strategies and working with the media.

She noted that low representation of women in the decision-making process had been recognised as closely linked with the drawback of development of the country.

Hajia Alima said that to ensure sustainable development, efforts must be made to deal with such gender issues as low recognition of the rights of women and the consequent limited representation of women's decision-making at all levels of society.

She explained that to help the process of resolving that societal imbalance, it was expedient to consider women's participation in decision-making at the grassroots level.

The Minister expressed the hope that the participation of women in decision-making at the local level would also serve as the training ground for political activism to enhance candidate's perceptions of and sensitivity to the problems of the ordinary people, especially the vulnerable who are mostly women.

Hajia Alima urged them to eschew petty jealousies and not allow themselves to be used by others to fight each other but rather come together as one to take common stands on issues that affected them to make life better in their communities.

Mr Emmanuel Asamoah Owusu-Ansah, Ashanti Regional Minister in a speech read for him said "our culture and mentality towards women's participation in decision-making and politics has long been a problem in the country" and expressed the hope that every encouragement would be accorded them to contest the district assembly elections.

He advised them to cultivate the habit of becoming more knowledgeable through reading of books so that they could get the necessary information and data to take informed decisions. The Regional Minister said their roles were sacrificial and asked them to put the interest of their district above their own personal interests to enable them to leave a mark in their communities before leaving the assemblies.