REGISTER DESIGNS AGAINST PIRACY (PAGE 23, SEPT 11, 2010)

The Chiefs and people of the Agotime Traditional Area have climaxed their week-long 12th Kente festival “Agbamevor za” with a grand durbar at Kpetoe in the Adaklu-Anyigbe District of the Volta Region.
The First Lady, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, who was the guest of honour, advised players in the industry to register their designs to prevent them from being pirated.
She said this had become necessary because modern technology was capable of being used to pirate and exploit the designs to their disadvantage.
The festival was marked on the theme: “Kente, our Heritage for Wealth Creation”.
“The world is rapidly changing and the advancement of technology calls for innovation and creativity in order to sustain the Kente industry.
Technological advancement is both a threat and an opportunity; it can be used to improve the quality of designs and packaging of your products and at the same time, used to pirate designs at the expense of local artisans, ” she said.
Mrs Mills noted that as part of this year’s festival, an Eco-Tourism Centre known as the Nature Conservation Research Centre, had been inaugurated at Kpetoe to document, protect and preserve the Kente heritage for the benefit of future generations, and praised the organisers for it.
The First Lady also announced that a tomato processing factory would soon be established at Agotime to process the large quantities of tomatoes produced in the area and eliminate the perennial post-harvest losses due to the unavailability of market for the crop.
The Volta Regional Minister, Mr Joseph Amenowode, expressed happiness that the two projects which had been sited in the area to enhance the lives of the people.
The projects are the Eco-Tourism Visitors Centre funded by the European Union and the Agotime Afegame Women’s Bakery Project funded by the Australian High Commission.
Mr Amenowode said the vision of the bakery project was to expand into a vocational training centre to equip the youth with functional skills to enable them to contribute their quota to the development of their communities.
The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Adaklu-Ayigbe, Mr Michael Adjaho, expressed his gratitude to the chiefs and people for the prevailing peace which was promoting a lot of development in the area.
Mr Adjaho said within the 20 months that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government had been in power, as many as 17 projects had been undertaken in the district.
These included the construction of five school blocks, extension of electricity to the Agotime Traditional Area, installation of street lights at Kpetoe and the reshaping of feeder roads from Akwetey to Mafi Kumasi and from Beh through Agbesia to Adokpakorfe.
The others are the construction of their district assembly office complex, reshaping and gravelling of the Kpetoe market road and culverts with the assistance of the Member of Parliament for the Ho East Constituency and Minister of Women and Children Affairs, Mrs Juliana Azumah Mensah, who hails from the area.
Mr Adjaho commended Mrs Azumah Mensah who was present at the function, for using her share of the MP’s Common Fund in assisting to solve the educational problems in the district.