Break the myth about the complexities of employing disabled people, Patricia Safo
Disabled people add productivity to organizations, Patricia Safo
The CEO of Crystal Lake, Patricia Safo, has urged businesses to consider employing persons with disabilities, which she reckons will go a long way to boost productivity especially when they are well-trained.
Patricia Safo explained that having an inclusive policy of getting persons with disabilities into organizations is a positive move.
She subsequently encouraged corporate Ghana to “look at it carefully and try it - they do need to be trained and you do need to learn sign language to be able to communicate with them, but once you are able to get over that hurdle, they are very productive group of people.”
According to Ms. Safo, firms should change their recruitment policies since government research shows that employers' attitudes are a barrier to disabled people being employed.
She also indicated that it is time to break the myth about the complexities of employing disabled people.
Speaking with the press after an event to mark the one year passing of her father, Daniel Osei Safo at Mampong-Akuapem, she said “we noticed over the years that actually employing some people from this community[school of deaf] was actually not a disadvantage so long as you could train them, they could actually add productivity within an organization, so as business owner you look at workforce that can increase your productivity so you can increase your bottomline, and sometimes you employ people who don’t do that, but our experience has shown that if you give these people the right set of skills they are definitely able to add positively to the organization’s output.”
The late Daniel Yaw Osei Safo, Chairman of Combined Farmers Limited, was the first Ghanaian agribusiness to engage persons with hearing impairment in his farming business.
For one of his daughters, Patricia Safo, the occasion could not have been a more memorable one.
"The reason for the day is to mark the one year passing of Mr. D.O.Safo, who started working with the people with such conditions in this community, he loved them, and he had the foresight to include them in his workforce when most people did not understand.
"They actually contributed to the growth of his pineapple business. So they learnt to grow pineapple very well and they did a good job, with the example created by D.O.Safo, other organisations like Blue Skies also followed suit.
"They are a group of people that we have to try and work closely with to promote agribusiness, so that is why we are here to mark the first anniversary of the passing of Mr. D.O.Safo,” she said.
The Safo family also used the occasion to institute an agriculture award scheme to reward the best student in honour of their father and to mark the one-year anniversary of his death.
The Headmaster of the Demonstration School for the Deaf, Satum Ametewee, exhibited some sense of appreciation to the Safo family.
He, however, suggested that business owners should consider engaging the services of people with such condition.
“These are children who are basically deaf, they use sign language and they are so hardworking that if you engage them because they use sign language, they would have to stop signing to do the work, so their concentration is basically on the work, so you get to see that they are much more focused on what they are doing than we the regular people. So, when you employ them, they do so well,” he said.
CEO of Crystal Lake, Patricia Safo