ormer Deputy Minister of Finance, Mona Quartey has praised the Statesman, Sam Jonah for his effort in ensuring gender parity in Ghana’s mining sector.
According to her, the businessman during his tenure of office as boss of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) saw to it that the workforce at the time had a fair representation of women.
“Mr Jonah was very good with bringing women to the table to also lend their voice to decision making,” she said in the yet-to-be aired episode of Ghana’s Greats on Joy News.
This, according to the former head of Treasury at the then-Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC), opened opportunities for women as it opened the flood gate for women to enter the mining space.
“When I came to Ashanti, there weren’t many women at all it was only the head of Human Resource (HR) that was a lady. The rest of the ladies were maybe telephonists, so for very few women ….what you would predominantly see as female-type careers.
“Within a short time that I was there I saw that he was targeting, recruiting women who were trained in mining as well mining related areas into the company so by 1996 we had female geologist, we had female truck drivers, we had ladies in the methodology department and these were engineers, we had female board member I mean I was hiring accounts,” she said.
Mona Quartey noted that during that period of female recruitment into the company, many of the underground miners were not happy to see them there due to superstitious beliefs.
“So there was a glass-walled that had to be broken and he did it in a nice way. He actually made us do it ourselves,” she stated.
The full episode of Ghana’s Greats airs on Joy FM on Monday, July 19 at 8:20 am and subsequently on JoyNews.
Ghana’s Greats is a documentary series that tells the stories of phenomenal leaders and the immense achievements of personalities in the country.
Source: Joy News