Ho, April 7, GNA - The Women's Committee of the Ho District Council of Labour (DCL) is to set up a Counselling Unit to help ease societal and family pressures that affect the wellbeing of their members. Mrs Vivian Abla Adoboe-Tefe, Regional Council of Labour Women's Committee Chairperson, announced this at a forum organised by the Volta Regional Secretariat of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Ho to mark International Women's Day.

She said the Unit would invite experts, including priests and some respectable members to sit on the Committee, which would meet periodically for the counselling sessions.

Mrs Adoboe-Tefe assured women workers that the committee sessions would not be avenues for people to glean tit bits about problems of their colleague workers for gossip.

"Those whose tongues cannot remain in their mouths and would go about telling stories of people should keep off the Committee," she warned.

Mrs Adoboe-Tefe, earlier in a lecture on issues of gender slammed women executives who were authoritarian, unfeeling, rude and overbearing at work, saying they posed threats to the women's empowerment movement. She said often, people wrongly take the attitudes of such executives as reflecting what all women would do when they got to the top.

Mrs Adoboe-Tefe called for more forceful fight by women to get fair representation on decision-making bodies, blaming cultural values, as the main cause of lethargy by women on many fronts of human endeavour. She said it was time for women in the various Unions to strive to be members of negotiation committees on salaries and working conditions, as the input of women on such issues, was very important. Mrs Adoboe-Tefe observed that the increasing spate of fathers neglecting responsibilities towards their children was putting too much pressure on mothers and the future well-being of children. Miss Patience Amewode, Ho District Council of Labour Chairperson called on parents to find ways of fighting the trend among young girls to seek favours from older men in offices.

" It is now common, you see young girls at offices making demands on men, many of whom show glee about such approaches, which they might have initiated anyway," she said.

Miss Amewode, said parents should be open with their daughters and impress on them to stop craving for things that could lead them into the trap of lecherous men.

Madam Alice Aziaka, Deputy Director of Nursing Service at the Volta Regional Hospital said the strain of neglect by husbands and pressure of keeping homes alone was a major cause of nervous breakdowns among women. Mr Maxwell Akoto-Mireku, Volta Regional Secretary of the TUC said women "should assert themselves and come out openly on issues on national interest."

He said the notion that behind "every successful man there is a woman must change to beside every successful man, is a woman. Mr Akoto-Mireku said this meant that women must walk into steps with men in all endeavours for national development and not stay behind.