Strengthen human resource capabilities - Minister

Accra, Nov. 28, GNA - Mr Yaw Barimah, Minister of Manpower Development and Employment, on Friday urged human resource practitioners to meet international challenges of the profession in attracting multinational and trans-national companies to invest in the country.

He said that was crucial to the total development of the country since any development, which was not human centred, was bound to fail.

This was contained in a speech read for by his Deputy Dr Angela Ofori-Atta at the Annual General meeting of the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners, Ghana (IHRP) in Accra.

The meeting was under the theme: "Creating Harmonious Industrial Relations Environment- the Role of the New National Labour Commission."

Mr Barimah said the Ministry was placing emphasis on the production of highly skilled and motivated workforce that could meet the demands of a modern technology-based industrial sector.

"This must be pursued at all cost if we want to break away from poverty and under development. It is not in any nation's interest to toy with the development and management of its human resource. In any country, where the national human resource development and management policy goes wrong, everything else goes wrong", he said.

The Minister said that in line with government's policy aimed at efficient development and the rational use of the country's human resource, the Ministry proposed a framework for conducting a national manpower survey leading to the formulation of a manpower policy.

The policy, he said, would aim, among other things, at harmonizing the supply and demand forces in human resource management with the growth and development projections of the economy in mind.

Mr Barimah said that the new National Labour Commission created by Act 651 of 2003, is to engender harmonious industrial relations by promoting effective co-operation between labour and management and expedite the resolution of industrial disputes.

He told the practitioners that Government was counting on the IHRP to approach their work with diligence, professionalism and integrity to justify the confidence reposed in them to effect positive changes in the human resource management in the country.

He said that their contribution to the success of the "Golden Age of Business" would require that they administered effectively the National Labour Act for the promotion and sustainability of industrial peace for the creation of wealth and to seek the welfare of their workforce.

Mr Austin Gamey, President of the IHRP, who praised the new Labour Law, said: "The Law is a masterpiece" and could be among the best in the world.

He said the contents of the law could not support laziness, unproductive working people and managements, no matter where they were located because the traditional "scapegoat", government and some of its agencies, especially the Labour Department would no longer be available for any employer, union or an employee to take advantage of.

On the contrary, he said, employers and employees would all avail themselves to the independent National Labour Commission to examine the pros and cons of alleged breach of sections of the law, policies and ethics for redress, through another external independent body - the mediator and the arbitrator.

Mr Gamey explained that those imposed additional responsibility on employers, unions, human resource and industrial relations practitioners to recognize that traditional method of all non-progressive activities would have to be abandoned or be at the mercy of public ridicule.

He said there was the need for a paradigm shift towards the adaptation of a new work system rather than what was being practiced, which could no longer stand in the face of the new Labour Law.

Mr Gamey noted that industrial relations management had changed and would continue to change from strength to strength, and that the honourable thing for both workers and managements to do was to change from perceiving each other as opponents instead of working together in consensus building.

He appealed to President John Agyekum Kufuor to consider the restoration of the Ministry of Manpower and Employment to take its rightful place as a full Cabinet Members because human resource remained supreme in all fields of endeavours no matter the technological advancement.