Define specific roles for First and Second Ladies - NGO

Mr Richard Boahen, the Executive Director of Think Health International, a health centered Non-Governmental Organisation on Friday said Ghana's First and Second Ladies required a well-defined role in the course of their duties.

According to him, this would help regularise their activities and travellings, as well as empower them to contribute significantly to national development.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Sunyani, Mr Boahen noted that, as a developing country, the nation required basic key performance indicators, which could help measure the impact and performance of her first and second ladies and hold them accountable as well.

"This current situation that allows First and Second Ladies to use their own discretion and will power to outline and pursue certain development goals is not the best for a developing country like ours" he added.

"The challenge with the situation is that an initiative introduced by a First Lady is always truncated as soon as her husband is out of office, irrespective of the stage where such initiative has reached".

Such of these abandoned initiatives of the First and Second Ladies, Mr Boahen said include the 31st December Women’s Movement instituted by Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, the Mother and Child Community Development Foundation by Mrs. Theresa Kufuor and the Mrs. Naadu Mills’ Foundation for Child Education (FCE).

All these programmes, he noted were laudable, but expressed the worry that they are all virtually not in existence.

Mr Boahen suggested the importance for a policy that would mandate all First and Second Ladies to continue with programmes and activities of their predecessors to give a realistic meaning in making them contribute to accelerated national development.

He observed that First and Second Ladies were positioned well to source for and easily get funding from development partners, and that, if their activities are guided by a national policy guideline, it would enhance development.