Black Stars Coach, Kwesi Appiah, has revealed plans to establish a solar manufacturing company in Ghana.
The plant, which will be situated in the Ashaiman Municipality in the Greater Accra Region to produce solar panels in commercial quantities, is an initiative of Coach Appiah and his business partners, Appiah-Karim Company Ltd., and Palmer Group Company.
The 14.5 Million Euros solar facility, which is being supported by the German Government, is expected to provide immediate jobs to about 500 youth in Ashaiman when completed.
Officials of the two companies, Appiah-Karim Company Ltd., and Palmer Group Company Ltd., both Ghanaian-owned businesses based in USA and Germany, disclosed the details of the partnership when they met with the Ashaiman Municipal Chief Executive, Albert Boakye Okyere, and some staff of the assembly on November 22, 2017.
Speaking to Oman FM, President of Palmer Group Company, George Palmer, explained that the objective of factory is to produce solar panels for both domestic and industrial use adding that “we are also going to set up a whole training facility to train the youth in solar panel fabrication as well as putting up marketing and service centre to offer 24 hour services.”
Asked why the group decided to invest in Ashaiman and not elsewhere, he said the group realised that Ashaiman is the fastest growing town in the country, but because of lack of jobs the youth are getting themselves involved in criminal activities, thus increasing social vices in the municipality.
According to him, the group believes when the youth in the municipality get decent work to they will desist from criminal activities, saying “we’re sure that with the establishment of the factory social vices being witnessed in the municipality will be minimized.
“Our focus is on Ashaiman because first of all we want to create employment to solve the problems we see in this municipality…Youth unemployment is the cause of all the social vices we see. And so we want to try our best to address these social vices by putting the youth back to work,” Mr George Palmer stressed.
He urged the residents of Ashaiman to support the initiative, assuring that the group is ready to do other things to improve thousands of lives and also transform the municipality.
Ashaiman Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Albert Boakye Okyere, who commended the group for their decision to invest in Ashaiman, said the Assembly exists to improve the livelihood of the people by championing development in the Municipality and therefore has opened its doors to private investors who want to invest in Ashaiman.
“Our interest is to get work for the young people in the Municipality so anything that goes with creating jobs we see it to be welcome news,” he said.
Mr Okyere, who described the unemployment situation in the Municipality as worrying, is convinced the yet- to -be established solar panel manufacturing company and other private sector initiatives of the Assembly will go a long way to reduce unemployment situation in the area.
He said the Assembly had already made land available for the project to commence.
