The North Tema Cooperative Savings and Credit Union has celebrated its silver jubilee with an appeal to parliament to pass the Credit Union Bill into law within the shortest possible time to enhance its operations.
Mr Emmanuel Oduro Darko, General Manager of Credit Union Association of Ghana (CUA), who made the appeal, said the passage of the bill would provide the framework and appropriate environment to improve the growth and development of sustainable credit unions in Ghana.
Mr Darko said, "Credit unions cannot be competitive, operate efficiently and be very effective without an appropriate legislation".
He stated that credit unions believe that developing sustainable, well-governed financial institutions in every small community would support the government's wealth creation and poverty reduction programmes.
The General Manager of CUA said credit unions were actively providing both savings and loans services to people with diverse background, including the rural and urban poor of which women were predominant.
He noted that though access to financial services was a right to every citizen, the current financial market has not been able to design suitable methods that could provide the deposit and credit needs of the entire citizenry.
Mr Darko further said as part of CUA efforts to solve this problem, it assists people with technical and material support to serve as startup capital for the establishment of small-scale enterprises.
He pointed out that the credit union concept has an extensive nationwide coverage, and that as at December 2006 CUA has accumulated 709 billion cedis savings, 462 billion cedis outstanding loans, 298 individual credit unions and 151 study groups, which over 500,000 members.
Mr Jonathan Ohene Oturoku, Country Manager for African Development Foundation (ADF), said self-generated micro-finance scheme has become one of the key ways of attaining development in a sustainable way.
Mr Oturoku explained that many of the donor nations were once filled with communities who overcame their development difficulties through the use of available resources in their environment in the creation of worth.
He commended the North Tema Cooperative Union, saying it was one of the best managed micro-financed institutions in the country.
"It is one of the few institutions that had not fallen into the predicament of 'donor dependency pit".
He said North Tema Cooperative had obtained ADF assistance once and had since then depended on its internally generated resources for its growth.
Mr Oturoku said due to the requirement of collateral as prerequisite for obtaining credits from donor communities, the credit union scheme has become very important as it encouraged its members to put aside a little of their resources to generate seed money for acquiring capital for businesses.
During the celebrations an HP computer and its accessories valued at 12.8 million cedis was donated to the Tema Community Eight number three Junior High School in appreciation of their help in housing the union during its early stages of existence.
In addition a second building valued over two billion cedis was commissioned while eight of its founding members were awarded for their competence.
Source: GNA
