A survey conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to assess the living standards of people living in the country has shown that unemployment among the youth (15 years and older) is high in urban areas compared to what pertains in rural areas.

They are at it again.  Those people who will not shed their slave mentality and will always want us to remain in the shadows of a white-skinned person.

Former Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Mr. Vincent Senam Kuagbenu has been assigned responsibility in the Office of the President to coordinate the rationalization and re-registration of Government vehicles.

Nollywood actor, Jim Iyke has debunked rumours that he and award-winning Ghanaian actress, Nadia Buari were planning to get married.

Nollywood actor, Jim Iyke has debunked rumours that he and award-winning Ghanaian actress, Nadia Buari were planning to get married.

President John Dramani Mahama on Monday gave the assurance that his administration's bid to create more jobs for teeming youth in the country would be centred on harnessing natural resources.

About 70 per cent of candidates in the last Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the North Gonja District could not read due to teacher absenteeism and lack of text books and other teaching aids.

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) has announced that members states in the sub region would from January 2015 adopt a Common External Tariff (CET) for goods coming in from outside the region.

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) has announced that members states in the sub region would from January 2015 adopt a Common External Tariff (CET) for goods coming in from outside the region.

Four people have been charged over the siege at the Westgate shopping centre in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, in which at least 67 were killed, police say.

Ghanaians yesterday cut another slice of history when they observed a partial eclipse of the sun, the second to occur in seven years.

By Paa Kwesi EsuonThe year was 1988. The month was January. At the Medical Block of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, I was coming round after many days in which the doctors had fought, first, to bring me out of coma and thereafter, to keep my pains down with powerful sedatives.

By Charlotte Hanson Section 97 of the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) obliges parties to negotiation to negotiate in good faith. However, it appears some of the social partners in the employment relationship are not committed to this provision in the law, thus the recent turbulence on the industrial scene. The recent industrial relations environment, which witnessed lots of agitation coming from workers organisations and trade unions, is a situation which undermines the exercise of good faith during negotiations. In the first and second quarters of the year 2013, the major strikes have come from the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), the Government Hospital and Pharmaceutical Association (GHOSPA), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT) and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) workers, among others. As  the atmosphere was becoming peaceful after the strikes of the GMA and GHOSPA, the industrial scene has again been besieged with strikes from the University  Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), the Federation of University Senior Staff (FUSSAG), the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) and a threat by the teachers unions to embark upon massive strike if the government, represented by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), did not pay them some already negotiated outstanding allowances.   CLOSSAG While the government kept on appealing to the associations to return to the table and get their matters resolved, the almighty Civil and Local Service Society of Ghana (CLOSSAG), the greatest employees of government, on October 14, 2013,  also embarked on a nationwide strike  in demand of a market premium. The question is: Who is responsible, the employer or the employee? While the unions have complained of lack of transparency, lack of commitment and poor communication by the employer in addressing their grievances i.e. salary arrears, retention premiums, car maintenance allowances, promotions, incremental jumps and the likes, the FWSC contends the inability of the employer to pay the money because the wage bill is sinking the government, as an employer. According to a paper delivered by Mr Dennis Vormawor, the immediate past Deputy Chairperson of the National Labour Commission (NLC), at a workshop for Social Partners in Ho in the Volta Region, the new labour regime anticipates a paradigm shift from the traditional adversarial negotiations of the past to the regime of interest-based negotiation where parties in negotiation are expected to take the larger interest of corporate Ghana into account in their negotiations. This interest of having Corporate Ghana at heart leaves much to be desired.     Turbulence To recall the turbulence as circulated in the media, it is evident that the parties to the dispute do not negotiate in good faith because from their statements they often hold on to entrenched positions and this stalls the negotiation process. Typically, in times of industrial disagreements, parties use words of blackmail, threats and coercion, thereby creating problems that affect productivity, profitability and sustainability. This posture undermines the process and the spirit of negotiation as negotiation is about give and take. Regrettably, however, this attitude leads to a deadlock, triggers strike or strikes, making the work place ungovernable. The traditional approach is rather adversarial and consequently imparts negatively on cordiality that should be a pre-requisite for harmonious industrial relations between the parties for the common good of all the social partners. This approach is currently seen per the new labour regime as primitive, outmoded and a practice of the past which must be discarded. The ideal method of proper industrial relations negotiations should, therefore, be one that is interest-based to ensure that the country remains competitive in the global environment. Interest-based negotiation In interest-based negotiations, parties are to focus on each other’s interests, thus finding ways to accommodate one another. Parties are expected to develop the capacity to listen to each other and spending more time thinking about how to attack what is being said or proposed by the other party. Additionally, it is to be done in good faith, with each party trying to understand the other’s concern and endeavouring to work as much as possible to meet either party’s interest without losing out altogether. It also means that parties in the dispute are to  brainstorm with the view to finding alternative solutions to the problems identified instead of one party holding on to one solution. After several solutions have jointly been identified, the parties must have the ability to engage in consensus building and then be ready to enter into the full haul of negotiated deal which then becomes the binding contract between the parties. The objective is to negotiate for the achievement of a “win-win “agreement and not “win-lose.” Getting to yes In conclusion, it is important to remind all the players in industrial relations that in this day and era, it is unacceptable to continuously negotiate holding on to entrenched positions. This is bad faith negotiation that triggers strike.  Perhaps, it will be advisable to wholeheartedly accept and follow the principles identified by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their book Getting to Yes, a sign of good faith negotiation that promotes  peaceful and harmonious industrial relations  environment.  

Yaw Oppong has been a poultry farmer for the past 30 years. When he started,  a broiler could be reared at the cost of about GH¢1.50 cedis and sold at GH¢3.00 cedis.

By Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey The Washington office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was the venue for the meeting in July 2013. Dr Mary Taylor, Senior Program Officer of the Foundation,  was busy plotting what would turn out to be her swan song – a planning grant for a national quality strategy for Ethiopia. Her only co-conspirator was the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), represented by the usual suspects – Pierre, Nneka, and yours truly. Amidst the intense brainstorming, Mary casually mentioned that as she would be leaving the Foundation, it was important to manage the transition. I was stunned. “How can you be leaving?,” I asked her. Apparently, I was the only stranger in town. When the moment finally passed, reflections of the truly remarkable woman I had come to know and admire flooded my thoughts. I first met Mary Taylor in the Netherlands in April 2010, during the annual International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare. At the time, I had joined Ghana’s Project Fives Alive! seven months earlier and did not fully grasp her pivotal role in birthing and nurturing this highly successful project. What I do distinctly recall was that, any time we slipped discreetly back into the hotel after embarking upon shopping of gargantuan proportions, we would bump into Mary. She would smile a certain grandmotherly smile, and ask whether we were having fun. We would smile back and quickly scurry away, with each party keeping their thoughts to themselves. The more I got to know Mary, the more I realised that she would not wonder about our voracious shopping. She would actually know its root causes. Here was a Senior Programme Officer who had thrown herself so completely into her job that she had an uncanny intimate knowledge of all her projects – whether in Ghana, Nigeria, or her beloved Ethiopia. For PFA!, Mary, we are told, had made a strong case for a project that deployed Quality Improvement methods to assist Ghana’s efforts to accelerate the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 4 – the reduction of child mortality by 67 per cent by 2015. Thus  was born Project Fives Alive!, a collaboration between the IHI and the National Catholic Health Service. Having demonstrated a strong track record of implementing and scaling up its programming according to design, Project Fives Alive! has shown significant impact on improving processes and outcomes of care. In 2015, when the global public health community evaluates progress in maternal and child health, PFA! expects to have contributed to delivering significantly lower under-5 mortality through improvements in access to and delivery of care that is safe, reliable, and of high quality across Ghana. Starting from an initial three districts, and spreading through all 38 districts in the three northern regions, the project is now operational nationwide in the remaining seven regions. I proudly cite these results in relation to Mary for the simple reason that she has been an active part of the entire journey, initially offering her support to our first Director, Dr Nana Twum-Danso, and transferring same to me upon succeeding Nana in December 2011. Mary Taylor was not the kind of officer who found comfort in her Seattle office. I was amazed and deeply impressed during one conference call to hear her mentioning specific villages and naming specific Community Health Officers who had distinguished themselves in specific ways. She won massive plaudits from me that day for the simple reason that I have engaged numerous managers at various levels in my line of work in Ghana who do not have a clue about the exact nature of the work they allegedly superintend. So to have someone from across the Atlantic display more knowledge, enthusiasm, and cultural sensitivity about local interventions earned her respect in my eyes. Nana succeeded Mary in overseeing the work in Ghana. The very engaging nature of my current interactions with Nana, coupled with insightful previous conversations, gives me confidence to conclude that Mary’s legacy at the Foundation will endure in two main respects inter alia: first, an officer’s ability to show great sensitivity to and skill in pooling and sharing knowledge and experiences across diverse projects and countries in her portfolio; and second, a passionate focus on ensuring that the bulk of Gates’ funding actually reaches where the work is being done – Africa! Mary taught me the value of preparation. In May 2013, she invited me to Ethiopia to share some of PFA!’s work with the Federal Ministry of Health. Having done this a zillion times, it did not present a formidable challenge. She had other plans. I watched in amusement as she set up the meeting akin to a military operation. First, she provided me in-depth intelligence on every participant and situated this within the larger policy and strategic objectives of the officials and government. We then burrowed through my slides during lunch, with rich nuanced feedback from our Ethiopian colleagues. By the time the presentation was due, she had managed to fire me up in an exciting kind of way. I neither regretted nor was disappointed. It then occurred to me that it was this type of commitment that must have led a senior Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health official to enthusiastically introduce Mary as “The White Ethiopian” during one public event. In his view, this was the biggest compliment he could pay her! But the relationship was not all professional. We chatted about her garden in Vermont. We talked about my three children, who constantly kept me busy in more ways than one. I still recall the smile on Mary’s face whenever she spoke about her new granddaughter. I laughed knowingly when she mentioned how the baby’s parents would sometimes innocently and charitably leave baby with grandmother – for some freedom! In the end, I concluded that it was her sheer commitment to family and her sense of prioritisation that won in the decision to leave the Foundation. “Why should I have to see my granddaughter every six months and not more often?,” she asked.   Website: www.sodzisodzi.com Email: [email protected]

Nana Ama is a con girl and a flirt who is always exploiting her beauty to lure men in the popular TV series Efiewura.

Nana Ama is a con girl and a flirt who is always exploiting her beauty to lure men in the popular TV series Efiewura.

It was a moment of excitement yesterday as Ghanaians observed a rare solar eclipse across the country. Children were particularly excited because most of them were experiencing the beauty of the natural phenomenon for the first time.

She had a long cherished dream to get an international platform on which she will sell her music to the world, and that is what Jael Wiafe has achieved following her collaboration with Jamaican dancehall gospel musician, Papa San, who she features on her new song Won’t Give Up.

She had a long cherished dream to get an international platform on which she will sell her music to the world, and that is what Jael Wiafe has achieved following her collaboration with Jamaican dancehall gospel musician, Papa San, who she features on her new song Won’t Give Up.