A progress report on the implementation of the Traque programme at CSIR-Food Research Institute

Abstract

In 2011, the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning signed four (4) new financing agreements with the European Union, one of which was the TRAQUE programme. The TRAQUE programme was aimed at offering continued support to the Ministry of Trade and Industry in private sector development, trade facilitation and capacity building with special attention to capacity issues, industrial strategy, implementation support as well as standards, national quality institutions and trade; private sector export support organisations. Over the project implementation period, the TRAQUE Programme provided technical assistance aimed at strengthening areas such as standards, metrology, accreditation and conformity. It also reviewed Ghana’s Quality Infrastructure to enable Ghana attain a national quality infrastructure which functions efficiently in-line with international best practice. The CSIR Food Research Institute was a beneficiary institute of the TRAQUE Programme. Through the TRAQUE Programme the Institute acquired state of the art equipments, to enable the Chemistry and Microbiology testing laboratories as well as the Mushroom Unit provide better services to the business sector, and to government ministries, departments, and agencies in regulatory businesses. Consumables received were pieces of glassware used in laboratories, chemical regents used in testing, and equipment such as ovens, autoclaves, incubators, fridges and freezers, storage cabinets, balances and microscopes, and a host of simple instruments, like grinders, mixers, and centrifuges, among others. Equipment for conducting specialised tests, like High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with Fluorescence (FLD) and Evaporative Light Scattering (ELSD) Detectors, Atomic Absorption Spectrometer with graphite furnace (AAS), Gas Chromatography-Triple Quadruple Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer were also provided under the TRAQUE programme. The implementation of the Programme at the Food Research Institute was fraught with some challenges that have been catalogued in this report. However, on the 15th of October, 2015, a few staff of TRAQUE, the Ministries of Trade and Industry and Finance and staff of FRI attended a brief handing over ceremony at the Microbiology Laboratory to mark the completion of works pending the provision of a 2000KV generator to the Microbiology laboratory and the installation of some equipment