The West-Africa Competitiveness Programme in Ghana (WACOMP – Ghana), funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), has organized an online training on the national standard for hand sanitizers.
The training was organized in collaboration with the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and aimed at promoting national requirements for alcohol-based hand sanitizers’ production.
Over 50 Ghanaian Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) willing to produce high quality hand sanitizers for the national market registered for the training.
Mr. Charles Kwame Sackey, the Chief Technical Advisor of the project highlighted that many alcohol-based sanitizers are on the market but not all of them are safe for consumers.
“With the EU support and our collaboration with national quality agencies like the GSA, we hope to help Ghana to produce locally high-quality alcohol- based sanitizers in large quantities” he said.
Mrs. Francisca Frimpong from the Food, Chemistry and Material Standards Department of the GSA explained in detail the Good Manufacturing Practices, the Product Certification Requirements and checklists for producing alcohol-based hand sanitizers.
She emphasized the importance of GS 1303:2020 on specification for alcohol-based hand sanitizer, developed through a partnership between GSA and two UNIDO implemented projects, WACOMP Ghana and the Global Quality and Standards Programme (GQSP), funded by the Swiss Secretariat of Economic Affairs (SECO).
In the conclusion remarks, Ms. Joyce Okoree, the Head of Standards at the GSA, cordially invited companies to contact the GSA for any information on how to produce products compliant with the approved standard.
Due to the rising number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Ghana, WACOMP Ghana will continue to support the fight against COVID-19 by strengthening cosmetics clusters producers’ capacities to produce high quality alcohol based hand sanitizers.
