The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) Monday resolved to keep employee welfare, as a key tool among other strategic management processes, for the arduous task of collecting revenue for national development.

Mr Gabriel Kofi Katamani, Commissioner, Support Services Department (SSD) of the GRA, gave the undertaking when he opened a three-day First-Aid and Fire Safety Training Workshop for selected staff of the GRA, at the Authority’s Training School at Agotime-Kpetoe.

He said employee welfare was as important for all production, just as appropriate equipment, procedures, systems and the assemblage of the men and women for the task, which in the case of the GRA was revenue mobilization.

Mr Katamani said a key challenge in employee welfare was health.

He said offshoots of poor staff health included unhappiness, absenteeism, sick leaves, un-productivity and poverty, among others.

He said the solution to meeting the challenge was planning.

Mr Katamani said the Employee Relations and Well-being Unit had been established to help employees plan their health, finance and social lives.

“The health screening is to help each of us to know and to manage our health conditions on time.

“The financial education is to help us start savings and investment for a better tomorrow.

“The social intervention is to help us secure our future and that of our loved ones through insurance,” he stated, also mentioning corporate efforts to prepare staff towards retirement.

Mr Katamani observed that but for these interventions, “the high death rate could have been worse, and the long list of sick people could also have been worse”

Mr Yusuf Quainoo, Head of Employee Welfare GRA, said the workshop was to ensure that during an emergency at the workplace, there was somebody within easy reach, with some knowledge of what to do.

He said beneficiaries were not assets for the GRA alone, but also for their communities and families, citing an example of a beneficiary recently helping to avert fire in a vehicle from escalating.

Topics to be treated at the workshops, a series of three, being attended by employees across all levels, include Counseling, Electronic Health Management and Project Management.

Jemina Mills, Coordinator of Change Management and Modernization Programmes, said employee welfare programmes represented an inkling of the total change management wind blowing through the GRA.