Government is to empower women to promote gender equality

Accra, July 21, GNA - Mrs Juliana Azumah-Mensah, the Minister of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), on Wednesday pledged the government's commitment to strengthen Ghanaian women in senior governance positions to promote gender equality and equity under its 93Better Ghana" agenda.

Taking her turn at the Meet-The-Press series in Accra, she said MOWAC had finalised its four-year medium term development plan with major objectives including promoting the socio-economic status of women and children.

Others are the vulnerable and marginalised groups through targeted interventions and creating awareness to support implementation of government's development policies affecting women and children in Ghana.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said Ghana over the past years had intervened and achieved some actions to address human trafficking and domestic violence that had remained the hidden form of violence in Ghana and elsewhere.

She said women constituted about 80 per cent of the informal productive sector of the economy and controlled more than 50 per cent of informal sector businesses.

Therefore the Ministry, since 2002, had been involved in the promotion of the economic rights of women by providing them with economic opportunities to improve their livelihood.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said a workshop on the preparation and development of national plan of action had been organised for stake holders such as civil society organizations (CSOs) and NGOs on women issues and the Ministry was in the process of establishing a network of women on peace and security in Ghana.

She announced that MOWAC had completed assessment on the mid-term review of the Commonwealth Plan of Action (COPA) on Gender Equality in 2009 and submitted to the Commonwealth Secretariat for further action.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said MOWAC had been facing constraints which included low participation of women in decision making at all levels, low coverage of women under the social security scheme and low representation of women in conflict management.

She said in spite of the above challenges, MOWAC intended to embark on many projects including strengthening collaboration with development partners especially NGOs anGIS warns public against unauthorised recruitment agents

Accra, July 21, GNA - Authorities of Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has warned the public against individuals who posed as employment agents for the Service.

Such impostors are allegedly issuing appointment letters to people ahead of a scheduled recruitment exercise in September.

Mr Francis Palmdeti, Head of Public Affairs Unit of GIS, told GNA in an interview on Wednesday that there was no such recruitment exercise and the authorities had not engaged any person to conduct any employment activity on its behalf.

He said the GIS followed a recruitment procedure that was always published in the media as a notice to the public.

"Recruitment criteria are stated in the advertisement. Examination or interview is conducted for short listed candidates. Successful candidates are then requested to undergo medical examination at approved health centres," he said.

Other procedures, he said, included issuing out prospectus for persons to be trained at GIS's academy after which successful candidates were given appointment letters.

Mr Palmdeti said 93any future recruitment exercise would follow laid-down procedure".

In another development, authorities of GIS on Tuesday apprehended 31-year-old Alex Dzineku, a teacher at Akroso Senior High School in the Eastern Region, for posing as an agent of the GIS.

He allegedly extorted between GH¢500 and GH¢600 from his victims and promised securing employment at GIS for them.

The authorities are conducting investigations before handing over Mr Dzineku to the police for further investigations.