The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), with support from the Trade Related Assistance & Quality Enabling (TRAQUE) Programme, has held a staff training workshop to make the organization more productive.

Mr Kwame Dei Asamoah-Okyere, Senior Regulatory Officer of the FDA, said the training considered consumer complaints handling and investigations, to strengthen knowledge base and skills of the trainees, to promote efficiency and effectiveness of the sector.

The TRAQUE programme is an initiative of the European Union, to support the Ministry of Trade and Industry, in trade facilitation and capacity-building, with special attention to Private Sector Development, Economic Partnership Agreement and Support to the National Quality Institutions.

Mr Asamoah-Okyere noted that there were two main plans for this month, starting with building the capacity of the staff to be more productive at regulating food.

He said there were 48 trainees from across the country with a representation of every region and the highlight was tackling the perspective of their consumer complaints, and putting up procedures to regulate them.

He also indicated that the second part of the plan has to do with putting up measures to enhance their market surveillance activities.

Explaining the measures to be used in improving the market surveillance, Mr Asamoah-Okyere disclosed that the Authority had developed an in-house project called the data glass system, where there would be a web content management system, to make it possible to access data online, to easily detect registered products.

He said the system is an updated one, where people living in Northern Ghana would have access to the same interface as those living in the other regions.

“It would help with the market surveillance, because currently we have to do a long tour to find out which of the products are registered and which of them are not, which prolongs our time to take action,” said.

The Senior Regulatory Officer said, they have given out technological gadgets, including tablets, to the trainees to help them to easily detect registered and unregistered products.

“With the tablets shared, officers are able to go online when on site, and issue out which ones are registered and which ones are not,” he indicated.

He said that they have other programmes outlined until July, including issues on international food safety systems and water treatment for pharmaceutical use.

Mr Asamoah-Okyere disclosed that by the end of the programme, they would have trained about 300 FDA staff nationwide, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the FDA, adding that TRAQUE sponsored the programme with about 120,000 Euros.