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The Social Workers Association of Ghana (SWAG) has appealed to government to involve its members in the COVID-19 fight as their exclusion would go against the country’s quest to curb its spread and social consequences.

Mr Divine A. K. Exorgbe, National President of SWAG, speaking to the Ghana News Agency said although the primary function of a social worker was to enhance human well-being and help people meet the basic human needs, managers of the country’s COVID-19 fight had excluded them from frontline duties.

Mr Exorgbe said “to SWAG, the exclusion of its members undermines the very roles and functions of Social Work, which include contact tracing, re-unification, community mobilization and sensitization, psycho-social counseling and support, Medical Social Work, Child and Family Welfare Services and many other equally important services that help with the well-being of the vulnerable in society."

He said it was regrettable that they had no representation at the office of the Local Government Service, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and now the National Response Team on COVID-19 pandemic.

According to him, by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and the Local Governance Act 936 of 2016, Social Welfare Officers were to play a lead role in such fights as they were clothed with the mandate to promote and protect the rights of the vulnerable in the society.

He said the psychological trauma associated with the viral infection of an individual or a family member could not be overemphasized adding it had led to destabilizing families worldwide.

He explained that the viral infection had resulted in various kinds of abuses, child delinquency, unemployment, increased number of orphans and vulnerable children, economic hardship on families, and other negative social consequences which undoubtedly called for the involvement of social workers to help address such issues.

The SWAG president therefore stressed that it was important to include the services of social workers in the national fight if government wanted to make significant strides in the fight against the Coronavirus.