The State must pay maternity benefits – Legal practitioner

Mrs Hilary Gbedemah, a legal practitioner, on Friday suggested that the state should pay maternity benefits to women in the formal sector.

She said this has become necessary because many employers were not paying such benefits.

Mrs Gbedemah made the suggestion at a day’s sensitization seminar organized by Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) for women in the Volta Region in Ho.

It was on the theme, “Women’s Rights Promotion in Ghana: Issues, Challenges and Options.”

She said maternity benefit was a right women could not afford to forfeit and urged stakeholders to ensure that that right was honoured.

Mrs Gbedemah observed that though Ghana was a signatory to many international instruments and conventions, implementation of such laws hardly favoured women and charged women to rise up for their rights.

She noted that though the country’s laws appeared to give equal protection to the citizenry, in practice there were various forms of discrimination at workplaces and in communities.

Mrs Gbedemah therefore urged women to continue to fight for their rights in various forms including upgrading themselves to be able to make more meaningful contributions to national development.

Source: GNA