Report sexual harassment by coordinators - service persons advised
The Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Dr Kpessah Whyte, has challenged service personnel, especially the ladies, to report sexual harassment by their coordinators to the secretariat.
He said if they did not report such incidents, it would be impossible for the secretariat to know who was suffering from such acts. He, therefore, asked them to be “bold enough to come forward to report and we shall address them appropriately”.
He described the alleged harassment by supervisors who proposed to service persons as unacceptable and a clear case of sexual harassment and warned that such cases, when brought before the secretariat, would be dealt with.
Complaints
Dr Whyte was responding to complaints by some service persons, especially ladies, that they were being harassed by their supervisors, who often threatened and sometimes refused to sign their forms, when their proposals were turned down. This was at a nationwide regional executive meeting of the National Service Personnel Association (NASPA) in Accra.
He advised that the affected persons could contact the district or regional executives of the NASPA or the secretariat.
Dr Whyte explained that the secretariat could not act on hearsay, since some of the supervisors might be refusing to sign such forms because the service persons did not work satisfactorily.
Connivance
Dr Whyte said during a monitoring session in some areas, the secretariat discovered that some personnel were conniving with their coordinators to collect money they did not work for and urged those who were genuinely working to expose such corrupt practices.
He was happy that for the past one-and-a-half years, allowances for service personnel had been released on time, and urged them to reciprocate that gesture by rendering quality service to the nation.
The executive director advised the service persons to trust the secretariat, adding, “Let trust be the basis of our way forward in making NASPA great again.”
Dr Whyte told the personnel that posting to rural areas was not a punishment, but a call to duty where their services were most needed.
He announced that the secretariat was working hard to ensure that postings for the 2016/2017 National Service year would be ready by the end of May to enable prospective service persons to have ample time to organise themselves and also make significant impact wherever they were posted.
Future of NASPA
With regard to the future of NASPA, the executive director proposed a strong regional and district NASPA that would work hard and effectively.
He explained that though he was not calling for the total scrapping of the national executive position, he felt the emphasis should be at the regional and district levels because the personnel were in those areas.
At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that a representative each from the 10 regions should meet with the secretariat’s legal advisor to form a constitutional review committee to analyse the constitution of NASPA.
Touching on welfare, the regional executives agreed that there was the need to establish a fund that NASPA could fall back on for welfare matters and they agreed that the source of funding should be the levying of GH¢1.00 per service person to be deducted from the GH¢10 NASPA dues per service person, with immediate effect for the 2016/2017 service year.
They further agreed that for the 2017/2018 service year, the dues would be increased to GH¢11, so that the GH¢1.00 would be deducted into the welfare fund.
“This means that instead of the GH¢10.00 per service person, it will now be GH¢9.00 for the 2016/2017 service year, but the GH¢1 would be added to the GH¢10 dues to make it GH¢11 for the 2017/2018 academic year,” Dr Whyte explained.
Political influence
With regard to politics, Dr Whyte said there was nothing wrong with service persons belonging to political parties. “Indeed, I expect all of you to belong to one political party or another,” he said, and added that it would be wrong for the leadership of NASPA to allow themselves to be manipulated by politicians to further a particular political agenda.
