Features
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying (Part 2)
The previous article discussed the issue of casual workers scattered all over the country who have been unjustly consigned to the status of “permanently temporary” employees against all conventions of fair employment practice. According to Ghana’s Constitution and the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, (ILO),which Ghana has ratified, no worker should be deemed to be casual after working continuously for six months but that has remained just a mere rhetoric.
People have worked for periods ranging from 10 to 20 years and are considered and treated casual labourers, an anomaly reported to be more widespread within public health institutions across the country. What is worse, these employees work for chicken feed, despite all their toil, and in conditions far from conducive. Worst of all, the Inspectorate Department of the Ministry of Employment and Labour that should monitor these things and serve justice, appears to be either nonchalant or plainly irrelevant.
In this article, the emphasis is on the abuse of women’s rights in the workplace. I would not talk about sexual harassment because even though it is prevalent, it is so subtle that it has assumed the status of normalcy without being seen for what it really is. Since Adam, some Ghanaian men, especially those in management positions, have seduced their female subordinates and pressurised them to succumb to their advances or face their wrath. Some have yielded out of fear of losing their jobs and have been left scarred for life. Yet, out of shame, and for fear that their story might be repudiated, they keep it under wraps while suffering in silence.
You see, men in Western countries cannot even pass suggestive comments without serious consequences. The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, lost his very lucrative job because of this. His younger brother, Chris Cuomo, one of the best journalists at CNN, who was found to have attempted to offer some advice to his brother’s staffers on how to wriggle his way out of trouble, also lost his job. The network fired him. In Africa, and for that matter, Ghana, it has become and remained normal and harmless. Consequently, the practice persists unabated, and offenders do not face any sanctions. Who will rescue the perishing? Who will care for the dying?
Another area of abuse concerns maternity leave, that is, the period granted a female worker by law to be absent from work before and after childbirth. Ghana has ratified the ILO Maternity Protection Convention, 1952, (No. 103) and has a legislation that stipulates 12 weeks paid maternity leave which works up to three months. Some groups, including the Ghana Medical Association, have advocated six months.
That is the ideal thing to do but there is a big problem. The elders would tell you:“Ko kompow’annya a, 3na treeee?” which loosely translates to: “If you did not get mere drops, how can you get a flow?” Some employers do not so much as educate their workers on their bill of rights, talk less of paying maternity leave. That is to say, even the mandatory 12 weeks are not given, not to mention doubling the period to six months as has been proposed in some quarters. In fact, some bosses keep beneficiaries in the dark about the requirement of the law and take advantage of their ignorance.
Paid maternity leave must not be allowed to be toyed with. Medical experts explain that conceiving a baby and having one, changes a woman’s body in ways that are hard to predict, making her moody, exhausted, restless, and ultimately depressed, if care is not taken. Unfortunately, employers do not consider the gravity of this concern and factor it into their plan as they design their benefit packages for their female employees if they do it at all.
Apart from the crime such employers are committing by denying women of such rights, they are also losing indirectly as giving that paid maternity leave would afford nursing mothers many benefits which would indirectly inure to the good of their companies by way of higher productivity.
In the first place, it would enable the women to exclusively breastfeed their babies which medical experts recommend as being far healthier and better than tinned infant formula. That would have a positive impact on the health of both mother and baby as it would serve to prevent post-partum depression which is common among women. It is estimated that about one in every eight women is affected.
A healthy mother will not absent herself from work unnecessarily and be in the right frame of mind to take care of her baby. Denying her sufficient time for maternity leave is bad enough, how worse does it get with none at all? Do such employers have any bowels of compassion at all? What do they think of a nursing mother without the benefit of family support leaving her tiny three-month old infant in the care of a stranger at a nursing home when she has not sufficiently bonded with her baby, but still has to resume work?
Some employers think they are even being considerate when they offer you a fraction of the stipulated leave period. They think it is a favour they are doing, especially if the workers are ignorant of their rights. Some are aware of the existence of the provision but do not know the details and so, anything goes.
In some cases, there is ample evidence that the new mother needs additional time to rest due to complications in delivery requiring surgical operation, and, therefore, additional days. But some callous employers deny the woman such medical rest even though the law provides that she should be given two additional weeks to the 12 weeks due her as her normal maternity leave.
What about the requirement that an hour a day should be given the new mother to nurse her baby? I will turn the earlier Akan proverb and say: “Treeeempo antre mu a, na ko ko?” meaning: “If a flow does not suffice, what good would mere drops do?”The boss does not even want to give you the real deal, that is, the 12 weeks maternity leave, how much less an hour a day to nurse your baby? In some instances, some employers have even been so mean as to punish pregnant women with dismissal even though they have genuine reasons for pre-natal and post-natal bed rest. And this is done without recourse to the laid down procedure for termination of employment spelt out in Section 15 of the Labour Act.
What is Parliament championing for women? The empty platitudes must stop. The rhetoric will not help. Last month, the MP for Nadowli-Kaleo, Mr. Anthony Suumah Mwinkaara, brought the attention of parliament to the unfair treatment of people unjustly classified and treated as casual workers even though they have long exceeded the maximum six months tenure stipulated for such staff.
The issue of women’s rights is another problem that this column is placing on the radar for consideration by parliament. It is long overdue for Ghanaian women to be treated with some dignity. Even if the House would not pass legislation to mandate a six-month paid maternity leave, it must pass a law to criminalise refusal to comply with the existing requirement of 12 weeks.
Besides, the House can propose a graduated scheme that provides for a percentage of the regular salary after the first 12 weeks if additional leave days are added. That could be a good compromise before the period may be formally extended to the ideal six months. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying! And remember, mothers cannot wait.
Contact: teepeejubilee@yahoo.co.uk
By Tony Prempeh
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
