Adwoa Safo failed at her vetting – Gender Group

The Gender Center For Empowering Development (GenCED) has passed a damning verdict on the vetting of Minister-designate for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Sarah Adwoa Safo.

Executive Director of the group, Esther Tawiah expressing her discontent in a Starr News interview said the Committee members using less than an hour to vet such a sensitive Ministry proves nothing but total a failure.

According to her, issues affecting women, among others, were not addressed which goes to show how little they regard gender and social protection issues.

“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 added, “International labor 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. It was a total mess and failure watching her being vetted”

However the Bawku Central MP, Mahama Ayariga, in a swift response has defended the Appointment Committee’s soft vetting of Sarah Adwoa Safo.

To him, they shielded her because she was a relatively “known commodity” to the Committee adding that, quality of proceedings was more significant than quantity.

“Before she came, we discovered that she had just delivered and so naturally, we felt that somebody who has just delivered, maybe we should have postponed her vetting, and we didn’t postpone it because we just got the information. We tend to know her track record because she was a former member of the Appointments Committee.

“She was a leader of the House immediately preceding her most recent nomination. We realized that there was no amendment to really bring the Procurement Authority under her mandate. It was still under the Finance Ministry, so it constrained us in terms of the areas of consideration.”