Mr Jonathan Ane, the President of the Canada Ghana Chamber of Commerce (CGCC), has urged Ghanaian workers to take very good care of their health.

“We need to pay particular attention to our health, in order to make sure that we have a working life balance,” Mr Ane stated during a panel discussion at a breakfast meeting organised by the CGCC in Accra.

The CGCC Breakfast Event on Women in Business Networking, on the theme “Maintaining a Work-Life Balance,” was opened by Ms Heather Anne Cameron, the Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana.

The meeting brought together a large number of women who were into business and entrepreneurship, chief executive officers and captains of industries.

Mr Ane advised Ghanaians to take good care of their health; stating that “without health you cannot achieve anything and health is wealth.”

He said: “So we need to make a conscious effort to consider how much attention we need to give to our health and that starts by you recognising that as a healthy person you can do a lot and as a healthy person you can discharge your responsibilities better.”

“There is no point having all the great ideas and you cannot execute them because you are sick or in the cemetery, like it is said the greatest and richest place to be in the world is in the cemetery, because there lies people with great ideas but they never got executed.”

Considering the fact that women play very pivotal roles in the nation’s socioeconomic development, Mr Ane called for their empowerment.

“I think we need to be very passionate as men and also as a society to see how best we can help rise up to the best of their abilities, that is to say that we should not just confine women to specific roles, we should be able to see how best we can help them manage their economic life and family life and still be great achievers,” he said.

Mr Ane said one established fact was that countries which had been able to attain great economic success had also been able to help their women develop themselves and became part of the leadership of those countries in terms of decision making.

The discussants essentially looked at what are the cultural challenges in allowing women to rise up and be relevant in the national and economic development.

Secondly, what they were doing in terms of mind set change to ensure that males did not think that women were not capable.

Considering the fact that women are playing vital roles in the economic development, the discussants also looked at how to empower women and give them the support to have a work and life balance; so that in trying to achieve economically they would not suffer from the family side and also when the focus was on the family side they will not suffer economically.

Other panel members at the roundtable include Mrs Shika Acolatse, the Country Director, ENABLIS; Mrs Georgette Sakyi-Addo, the Executive Director, Georgette Barnes Limited; and Mrs Olivia Donkor, the Chief Executive Officer of Ariel’s Haven.