Adowa Safo's vetting disappointing - Gender group

The Gender Center For Empowering Development (GenCED) has criticized the appointments’ Committee of parliament over the vetting of Gender, Children and Social Protection minister-designate Sarah Adwoa Safo.

The nominee spent less than an hour before the committee, the shortest time since the sitting began.

According to the organization, the committee members failed to touch on issues affecting women which goes to show how little they regard gender and social protection issues.

Executive Director of GenCED Esther Tawiah expressing discontent to Starr News noted: “our lawmakers do not prioritize gender issues, so they did not take the time to go into the books, to know about the issues that need to be addressed.”

“Affirmative action is not the only gender issue that women in Ghana are battling with. As we speak, sexual harassment is still not a policy that is implemented in most of our work environments, and women are suffering and going through things because they don’t know.”

She went on “International labour organization has increased the maternity leave and all that they are not even interested. We are talking about a child-friendly working environment, they are not asking all these questions.  We are talking about the Covid-19 management team which has left gender representation and issues about women and children are not really factored and become an afterthought, they are not concerned about it because they don’t know.”

“We have issues in agriculture, rural women are suffering and they are calling for extension officers that are women to help those women going to the farm because some of them have complained of rape and all that,” she added.

“It is not Adwoa’s fault, Honourable Adwoa has done nothing. The people in the appointment committee who went wrong.”