By Bajin D. Pobia / Philip Tengzu
Wa, (UW/R), May 03, GNA – Some journalists and media practitioners in the Upper West Region have received a two-day capacity building to enhance their knowledge and reportage on issues relating to decent work and social protection.
The training was to enable the media actors to serve as advocates for the promotion of decent work and social protection schemes for deprived communities in the region and the country.
It was to, among other things, encourage the practitioners in the media space to work towards influencing government policies and programmes on decent work at all levels of governance to help develop a clear roadmap for the enforcement of decent work principles, particularly in the agricultural sector.
ActionAid Ghana (AAG), an international Non-governmental Organisation, organised the training with funding from the European Union as part of the implementation of the Northern Ghana Integrated Project.
Mrs Esther Ohenewaa Brown, the Communications and Public Relations Manager of AAG, in a presentation, observed that most deprived rural communities were not benefiting from social protection programmes such as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty and the Ghana School Feeding programmes.
“Social protection stresses the important link between productive employment and security for those who for some reason do not have a job at all.
It also stresses protection from the loss or reduction of income due to unemployment, injury, maternity, parenthood, or old age”, she explained.
Mrs Brown raised concerns about the indecent work environment that some rural women farmers endured and stressed the need for such indecent work conditions to be brought to the fore for redress.
The participants were taken through the concept of decent work agenda and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, decent work principles within the agriculture value chain, and expanding access to social protection for smallholder women farmers and vulnerable groups.
Dr. Eliasu Mumuni, Senior Lecturer and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies at the University for Development Studies, took the participants through a study on the “Assessment of Descent Work Principles in the Agricultural Sector in Northern Ghana.”
He indicated that: “Women and youth in the study regions (Upper West, Savannah, Northern, and Upper East Regions) were mainly engaged in what is described as vulnerable jobs in the informal economy.”
The study showed that more females than males, that is, 45.8 per cent and 14 per cent of female and male participants in the study respectively, said they were into vulnerable jobs.
He said research findings presented a need for the media to prioritise the promotion of decent work and social protection schemes, especially for women and other vulnerable groups.
Mr Sualah Abdul-Wahab, the Upper West Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association, expressed gratitude to AAG and its partners for the training and urged the participants to utilise the knowledge gained to improve the conditions of women and vulnerable groups.
“When we are given the opportunity, we should prove beyond doubt that it has an impact on our work,” he said.
Mr Abdul-Wahab appealed to AAG to organise more of such training programmes for the media to work in the interest of the vulnerable people in society.
GNA