The National President, African Women Entrepreneurship Programme (AWEP) Angela Ajala on Friday appealed to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) to make registration process easy for entrepreneurs in the country.
Mrs. Ajala made this appeal at the annual general meeting and conference of AWEP in Abuja with the theme, ‘Its in You’ stating that AWEP is in partnership with some government agencies such as Bank of Industry (BoI), Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Bank of Agriculture (BoA), SMEDAN and others.
She appealed to NAFDAC to prioritize timing, while lamenting that NAFDAC certification is very difficult to access, and it takes a long time before the owner can access it, ‘we keep wondering why, even though our members are always given us feedback on the difficulty they face’.
“If you write application to NAFDAC, it will take about nine months before you get the reply. In that nine months, you have employees whom you pay and so many of your work activities are tied to the NAFDAC number, but the agency will not show concern.
“Again, NAFDAC will ask for samples, it will not ask for one or two but 12 and above for laboratory testing, this is wrong, to us in AWEP, this is not reasonable at all. These are the reasons why we want to go into full partnership with them, maybe there is a communication gap somewhere so we can close it up,” she said.
Dr. Steve Ogidan urged women to embrace technology for their business to grow, stating that the most difficult part of business is how to sustain growth. He noted that being a small business has its disadvantage and many challenges that is why they need the technological platform to run a smooth business.
