TODAY IN HISTORY: Abandoned Aboso Glass Factory Commissioned today in 1966
Today in History, exactly 54 years ago, on 5th February 1966, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah commissioned the Aboso Glass Factory Which cost 9,000,000 Cedis.
Aboso is a town near Tarkwa and is the capital of Wassa West district, a district in the
Western Region of Ghana. Aboso is the 78th most populous settlement in Ghana, with a population of about 9,945 people.
At the Ghana census of 18 March 1984, there were 4,700 inhabitants living in the town.
The Factory was once a vibrant company that manufactured and supplied Glasses and bottles for the beverage industry in Ghana.
The Glass factory had a yearly output of 18 million bottles, 2 million units of tableware and 8 to 10 million square feet of sheet glass and louvre glass.
Aboso Glass Factory employed about 500 Ghanaians in its early operations.
The Collapse of the factory
However, the Aboso Glass factory has been closed and has not been operating for so many years now due to lack of machinery, maintenance, and capital.
Despite this, just 19 days after Kwame Nkrumah commissioned the Aboso Glass factory, he was overthrown as president of the Republic of Ghana on February 24, 1966.
From the north to the south across the east to the west of the country, hundreds of factories ranging from cement, steel, roofing sheets, glass, rubber, jute, matches, sugar, paper and leather to rattan products, were set up under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Nkrumah’s intention was to make Ghana an industrialized country in order to break away from relying too much on imports, therefore, he established factories but 50 years on, all the factories have collapsed due to poor management after his overthrown.
After many years of routine promises from past governments to revive the Glass Factory, the state of the factory remain the same since the promises did not see the light of day.
My Dad was sent to work in the factory as a technical glass engineer from Canning town glass in Brittain in 1975 his name was Jeffrey Coe
Please so where is your father now?Wanna have a with him please. Thanks
do you think the glass factory would be revived?
and if it is, how beneficial would it be?
……well, it would mean local breweries would depend on the glass from our local factory without importing! which is ver beneficial.
but, how much do we, as a country, spend on glass(the glass itself and its importation).
if we had information/data about the amount of monies we are pouring into other countries for glass, it would make the revival of the factory even more necessary.
It’s good to have data on the amount we are spending on glass wear to be able to draw our cost-benefit analysis to arrive at a prudent decision. However, we sometimes don’t need all these “book-long” things, they are unnecessary bureaucratic gimmicks that slow the wheels of development. Just by what we see daily, it is clear how much we use, and thus need a lot of glass products in this country. From the building industry to automobile, electrical, etc, just to mention a few. Bottom line, we need the glass factory and other factories by Nkrumah revived, if we wish to go anywhere in terms of development. It may also help in curbing our unemployment rate.
I want to believe i have no idea how the factory was run and collapsed. But i would encourage the idea that private investers be allowed to resurrect the collapsed factories Dr. Kwame Nkrumah established. At least, it would create more jobs for Ghanaians.
Mein Vater hat von 1965 bis 1968 dort gearbeitet und ich bin dort zu Schule gegangen.