General News of Saturday, 11 April 2009

Source: GNA

Reactivate PWC, SCC and SHC

Winneba (C/R), April 11, GNA- The government has been urged to reactivate three major state owned companies which have not been functioning actively for decades now, to create adequate employments for millions of Ghanaians currently yearning for jobs.

The companies are the Public Workers Department (PWD), the State Housing Corporation (SHC) and the State Construction Corporation (SCC). The call came from the Right Reverend Bishop Dr. Godfred Zormelo, a Senior Clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, during a special Easter interaction with the press at Winneba on Saturday. Rt. Rev. Dr. Zormelo charged Ghanaians to erase from their minds the perception that the state-owned companies cannot be efficient and effective if even managed by qualified technocrats.

He said what was seriously lacking in the management of state companies is effective and uncompromising monitoring machinery that would ensure that management of these companies did the right things. The Senior Clergyman said a good number of Ghanaians who have had the opportunity to visit some Asian countries often compared Malaysia with Ghana because "we started on the same note with Malaysia." He reminded such people that the immense successes the country had chalked over the year was mainly due to the sustained effective and efficient running of their state-owned agriculture and other economic industries and not the total reliance on private entrepreneurs. This way, Rt. Rev. Dr. Zormelo maintained, Malaysia had been able to curb unemployment because its vast state industries were still in a position of absorbing the ever-increasing unemployment rate. He recalled the good works of PWC, SCC and SHC in the early part of Ghana's independence and expressed the hope that the government could re-activate and quip the three inactive state establishments to reduce unemployment challenges confronting the nation. Rt. Rev. Dr. Zormelo, expressed the belief that when revived the PWC and SHC could conveniently take up the rehabilitation of government buildings and put up affordable housing units for Ghanaians whiles the SCC could also deal with other construction activities.