The Fair Trade Premium Committee of the Volta River Estates Limited (VREL), a bananas cultivation and export company, has organized an eye-screening exercise for its 465 staff.
Estimated cost of the health-welfare programme was GH? 8,000.00 and it was done in collaboration with Save the Nation Sight, Accra-based Eye treatment hospital and LILIMED Clinic, in Ho.
The Fair Trade concept aligns trade with the international drive for social equity, where premiums are charged on products and it is used in promoting staff welfare of producing companies and inhabitants of communities around its plantations.
Mrs Juliet Arku-Mensah, Fair Trade Officer of VREL, said the company under its Fair Trade deal had over the years carried out checks on workers for diabetes, hepatitis and syphilis.
She said under its work plan, workers also benefit from skills training and scholarships for their wards in various schools.
Mrs Arku-Mensah said the company is also helping to establish community projects including computer labs for Akwamuman Senior High School and the Akrade community and this yet to be completed.
She said other areas where there is a VREL-Community bonding include the installation of water reservoirs for communities, especially in townships from which VREL staff commute to work.
Mrs Arku-Mensah said the VREL currently has 370 hectares of bananas and this is expected to rise to 500 hectares, 100 hectares of pineapples and his is also projected to rise to 250 hectares.
Rev Benjamin Bankas, Chief Executive of the LILIMED Clinic, said besides the VREL workers, the 10-day screening exercise also catered for people in and around Akrade, including Kpong, Akwamufie, Atimpoku and Tusker.
He said eye conditions treated were mainly itches, pains, pterygium and a few cases of glaucoma.
Rev Bankas said cases needing special attention were referred to the Save the Nation?s Sight Clinic in Accra.
Life for the Living Medical and Humanitarian Centre (LILIMED) a Ho-based charity, which owns the LILIMED Clinic, also undertakes periodic checks of eye conditions of inmates of the cluster of leper villages in Ho.
GNA
