NAARA BANK DONATES CRITICAL LOGISTICS TO FIGHT COVID-19

The Naara Rural Bank [NRB] Ltd. this Tuesday morning, made a huge donation of several tens of Veronica buckets, liquid detergents and assorted personal protective equipment [PPEs] to the Management of the Kassena-Nankana West District [KNWD] Assembly in the Upper East Region, for onward distribution to health authorities, market centres and other identifiable points where people usually congregate.

 

Board Chairman, Mr. Simple [in smock] handing items to Hon. Ataogye

Speaking at a brief presentation ceremony at the forecourt of the bank’s headquarters in Paga, General Manager of the bank, Mr. Samuel Namoog disclosed that it cost the bank some 35,000.00 Ghana Cedis to procure the whole package of items, having sought approval from the Board of the bank. The details of the package he further disclosed, comprised 50 pieces of Veronica buckets, 1,200 pieces of nose masks, 150 pieces of 4.5-Ltrs. of liquid soap, 250 pieces of 500-milligrams of liquid soap and 540 pieces of 150-milligrams of hand sanitizers.

Mr. Namoog noted that with the outbreak of the Corona Virus pandemic, many businesses as well as individual clients of the bank, were either stretched to their limits or completely out of business and that, the time had come for the bank to extend a helping hand to boost the efforts by like-minded stakeholders targeted at taming the disease. He added that the package so-presented, was to be apportioned among all the five districts in whose jurisdictions the Naara Bank had branches namely; the Nabdam, Kassena-Nanakana West and Talensi districts as well as the Bolgatanga and Kassena-Nankana Municipalities.

The General Manager revealed that as an entity, the bank’s staff at all the branches, work under the widely-accepted strict COVID-19 protocols in order to stay safe and to serve the public during these trying times. Meanwhile, Management had also instituted the “no mask no entry” policy for all persons entering the banking hall. It is also mandatory for all and sundry to wash hands with soap under running water and clean with sanitizers before access to the banking hall.

GM of Naara Bank, Mr. Samuel Namoog during an interview

He called on government to extend its stimulus package to cover the rural and community banks across Ghana since by his projections, this class of banks would be worse-hit than many mainstream commercial banks. He observed that mobilisation has been adversely affected through the months as the very persons and businesses at the community and grassroots level on whom banks such as Naara depend for the chunk of their liquidity, had been confined by the COVID-19 scare and restrictions from undertaking their regular businesses thus making no incomes let alone to save. 

Mr. Namoog therefore charged Management of the various recipient assemblies to ensure that, the items reached the health staff and other vulnerable persons who were in most-need and whose daily activities put them in harm’s way as far as COVID-19 was concerned. He also appealed to all Ghanaians especially clients of the bank and all persons in its operational areas, to strictly adhere to the safety protocols put out by the Government and health authorities. These include but not limited to the frequent washing of hands with soap under clean running water, wearing of prescribed nose masks, abstinence from touching the face with unclean hands, and the keeping of social distancing among others.

District Chief Executive [DCE] for the KNWD, Hon. Gerard Ataogye who received the donation on behalf of his colleague municipal and district chief executives, thanked management of the NRB Ltd. for the gesture and said, it came just in time to beef up the lot that government had already done and continues to do in the COVID-19 fight. He said on its own, his Assembly had undertaken several public awareness campaigns, conducted periodic surveillance on the disease and also procured several dozens of PPEs and distributed same to various health facilities across the district.

The items as were being set up

Hon. Ataogye emphasised that, there was the urgent need for all stakeholders to join forces in taking care of the masses and saving lives first for as he put it “without the people, we cannot talk of our economy”. He expressed optimism that as soon as the pandemic gets eradicated completely, Ghana’s economy will bounce back to form rapidly because the Nana Addo led-government had the adequate men with the appropriate know-how to run the economy in such a way to hit the desired targets. He also made a passionate for all manner of affiliations such as political, religious, tribal and co, to be discarded if the nation really wants to fight the pandemic to a successful end. 

Naara Bank’s Board Chairman, Mr. Robert Simple Atiiru earlier in his welcome address, expressed his profound gratitude to frontline workers some of whom had lost their lives in their sacred duties of saving the lives of others. He acknowledged that, the intervention of the bank may seem small in the general mix of things but the statement is made per the gesture that, Naara Bank cares for the lives and well-being of the citizenry most especially, it customers and the prospective ones also. He said this explains why the Board didn’t hesitate to grant its approval for the procurement of items culminating in the eventual presentation of the package.

The Naara Rural Bank was established in 1981 in Paga in the then Kassena-Nankana District and has since its inception, contributed a great deal to the growth of the local economy in its wider operational areas granting affordable loans to market women, farmers and farmer-based groups. Through the decades, the bank also lived up to its corporate social responsibility across the social, health, sports and other spheres of life.