Committee to investigate labour issues in GNA inaugurated

Accra, Aug. 23, GNA - A fact-finding committee set up to look into labour and other issues affecting the general progress of the Ghana News Agency was on Monday inaugurated with a call on members to come out with a report that would bring peace.

Mr Wilson Kusi-Atansah, Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), urged the Committee to "find the facts, through dialoguing, devoid of personal sentiments and emotions" to help address the issues and the growth of the Agency.

"Do not give cause for anybody to discredit the Committee, but be fair and avoid any flaws," he told the Committee members.

Mr Kusi-Atansah expressed the hope that the Committee would look at issues objectively and come out with mutual agreements that would help solve the problems of the Agency to achieve "peace within the House".

The eight-member Committee, established at the instance of the Board of the GNA in consultation with the NMC has Dr Akuamoah Boateng Anane, Member of the Board, as Chairman.

Mr Kusi-Atansah noted that the Agency, being a strategic entity, attracted a lot of interest from everybody including the Government and so there was the need to find lasting solutions to its problems.

This, he said, called for people, who were abreast with the issues at stake to discuss and put things in order and urged the staff of the Agency to disabuse their minds that members of the Committee would be biased.

"Let us try this Committee first to see how they would work before raising any objections."

Dr Anane, Chairman of the Committee, asked the staffs to feel free and appear before the Committee with a free mind when they were invited.

"We are not going to try anybody and nobody would be on trial here. We are rather here to dig the facts and help ensure peace in the house." Dr Anane said no member of the Committee would take entrenched position in finding the facts and solutions to issues affecting the Agency.

The other members of the Committee are Mr Musah Abdulai and Mrs Gina Blay, both Board members of GNA and Mr James Ampadu, Acting Director of the Ministry of Information.

The rest are Mr Kofi Asamoah, representative of the NMC, Mr Divine Arthur Bosompem of the Labour Department of the Ministry of Employment and Manpower Development and Mr Richard Ampaabeng, representative of the Public Services Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The Committee has one month to come out with its report, which would be submitted to the GNA Board that would liaise with the NMC to implement its findings.

Among those present at the inauguration were Mr Robert Kafui Johnson, General Manager; Nana Appau Duah,

Supervising Chief Editor and Administrative Manager, Mrs Bernadette Chinery-Hesse.

Also present were the First and Second Trustees of the GNA Local Union, the Reverend Father Ransford Titus-Glover and Mr Benjamin Teiko Armah, respectively.