Faris Attrickie (right) presenting a dummy of the insurance cover to the GJA President
Five hundred journalists covering the December polls will be insured by the SIC Insurance PLC, a dummy of which policy was presented to the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) yesterday at the Gifty Afenyi Dadzie Hall of the Ghana International Press Centre, Accra.
Speaking about what he described as a groundbreaking gesture, President of the GJA, Roland Affail Monney, expressed gratitude to the foremost insurer and called on the media to support it with its publicity needs.
Yesterday’s activity, the GJA President said “will occupy a special place in history as the day the number one insurer in Ghana, SIC Insurance Company Limited, rallied to the assistance of practitioners of the number one profession in the world-journalism with an incredible offer of GH¢20 million Group Personal Accident for 500 GJA members who will be accredited to cover the elections.”
The cover spans November 1, 2020 to January 31, 2020.
According to him, the SIC deems the gesture a national responsibility towards supporting the GJA members to carry out their roles which involves risks of bodily harm and damage to equipment, and in some instances death.
Each journalist, he said “has up to GH¢40,000 for death and permanent disability and GH¢3,300 per month for a period not exceeding 12 months.”
An excited GJA President said “indeed nothing can be more rational and nationalistic than that of this gesture which is unprecedented in history and unparalleled in substance.”
Election, he said, was the centerpiece of democracy, which he went on, was impossible without the media.
With elections around the corner, he added that there should be no room for complacency by the media which over the years had excelled in managing election time journalism.
He especially pointed at the media performance in the 2016 election. “By dint of effort and grace of God, the media showcased the best electoral history in 2016,” he said, adding that ‘the insurance package from SIC is the right thing at the right time to motivate journalists to either maintain their 2016 record or scale it up.”
On his part, Faris Attrickie, General Manager, Operations, SIC, acknowledged the role of the media in the face of atrocities against them as carriers of the messages.
The risks of journalists are bigger in Africa than elsewhere, adding that it might not be easy to prevent some occurrences but it is possible to prepare for such eventualities.
“We in the SIC thought about journalists in Ghana as we acknowledge that they have not been given the right recognition,” he said.
SIC he said was setting the pace for other corporate entities to follow through the gesture to the GJA.
SIC had other plans for Ghanaian journalists, he assured media practitioners in the country.
In case of a claim it is the GJA which would put a request, and this, he assured, would be tackled within a fortnight.
By A.R. Gomda