The Ghana Shippers’ Authority in collaboration with the French Embassy has embarked on a Basic French teaching course for freight forwarders.
The training program is to last for 6 weeks with 30 participants being members of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders, Custom Brokers Association of Ghana and Association of Customs House Agents of Ghana.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Shippers’ Authority, Benonita Bismarck, this initiative is to bridge the gap in communication between Ghanaians and their Sahelian counterparts in the maritime business.
She said, it was important to target the custom house agents as their subjects, since they have constant direct interaction with transitors.
“We are surrounded by all these Francophone countries and most of the time communication when it comes to transit trade is very difficult,” he said.
She also acknowledged the French embassy’s 100% sponsorship of the program. She said the training program includes a special trainer of trainees program which would equip one of the Shippers’ Authority’s staff to takeover subsequent training programs.
“The French Embassy decided that they would want to support us by training the Customs House Agents and as part of the training, they would want to train one of our staff, on a trainer of trainees program,” she added.
Benonita Bismarck encouraged the participants of the course to be committed to this language development program by practicing among themselves as that is the only way languages are efficiently learnt.
The Acting Executive Secretary of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders, Eddy Akrong welcomed the opportunity to take the French lessons and added that it will go a long way to improve their working relationship with the transit business community.
“The interesting part is that we stand at a huge disadvantage because we have not taken our French seriously. We think that this would put us in great stead,” he said.