By Patrick Biddah
The Electricity Company of Ghana ( ECG) has set out to mentor and groom 150 of its female staff to occupy managerial positions in the near future .
This move is to close the gender disparity at the company’s top management level and to empower these females to actualize their full professional potential and skills at the workplace.
Aside from the 150 potential leaders, the company is giving scholarships to 10 needy but brilliant students to pursue electrical engineering and computer science programmes at the various tertiary level institutions
At the launch of this programme yesterday December 7, 2023 in Accra, the Patron of Power Queens Club of ECG, Maataa Opare, stressed that the empowerment of the females is essential to the progress of ECG.
Christened the Fempoweroutreach and scholarship programme, proponents of the idea believe more is needed to be done to push more women into the top hierarchy position of ECG.
The Chief of Staff , Akosua Osei Opare, who launched the programme and with her career progression serving as a motivation , urged the females not to allow womanhood become a setback to their career advancement.
Using herself as an example, she said taking criticism and opening up to ideas from someone considered to be the least person at the workplace helps female leaders to learn new things which will help to stay at the top.
“ Be confident and not arrogant although people mistake confidence to mean arrogance. Be open minded and do not be resistant to criticism “, she advised.
In her analysis during media interview, she expressed the view that the women cannot be sidelined in a country where they form the majority.
“ This is not a competition between men and women but just acknowledging that the women if given the space qualify to occupy the top spot in the male dominated environment of the field of work”, she explained.
The Managing Director of the ECG, Samuel Dubik Mahama, pledged his support for the programme, saying that for the first time in the history of ECG, a female who was director of procurement has been moved to engineering .The woman is madam Jacqueline Ofori-Atta, who has been with the company for over three decades.
On the issue of the application to train 150 members of the company to take up leadership positions, he gave the assurance that the process is opened to all and will thus be fair
“The application is opened to all. At the end of the day we would need to have more electrical engineers which is why there is the need to open it up to be able to get them, “he stressed.
