• Mona Quartey has been hailing Sam Jonah
• She said Sam Jonah brought so many changes to AGC
• She added, Jonah gave the women equal opportunity as the men
Mona Quartey, a former Deputy Minister of Finance, says Sam Jonah, Knight of the British Empire (KBE), whilst he was the CEO of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC), was very good in ensuring that women within the mining sector are part of decision making.
She said, even as the head of Treasury herself, she ensured that many opportunities were opened to women to be able to enter into the mining space.
Mona Quartey noted that it was during the period of Sam Jonah that a lot of females were recruited into AGC, which many of the underground miners were unhappy to see the women in their space due to some credulous beliefs.
Quartey explained to Joy News in a report monitored by GhanaWeb, “Mr Jonah was very good with bringing women to the table to also lend their voice to decision making.
“When I came to Ashanti, there weren’t many women at all; it was only the head of Human Resource (HR) that was a lady. The rest of the ladies were maybe telephonists, so for very few women…what you would predominantly see as female-type careers.”
“Within a short time that I was there I saw that he was targeting, recruiting women who were trained in mining as well mining related areas into the company so by 1996 we had female geologist, we had female truck drivers, we had ladies in the methodology department and these were engineers, we had female board member I mean I was hiring accounts,” she said.
“So there was a glass wall that had to be broken and he did it in a nice way. He actually made us do it ourselves,” Mona Quartey stressed.
