PWDs CALL FOR GREATER SUPPORT (MIRROR, DEC 24, PAGE 25)

From Benjamin Xornam Glover,
Sambolgo

Persons with Disabilities (PWD) in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region have called on the government to ensure that issues affecting persons with disabilities are considered in the implementation of projects and programmes towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
“It is our expectation that the government and parliament would take steps to address our concerns with the view to ensuring our full participation in all matters affecting our well-being.”
A spokesperson of the Federation of Persons with Disability in the district, Mr David Aniaa, made the appeal at a delayed celebration of the International Day of the Disabled at Sambolgo Namoo in the Bongo District.
December 3 has been set aside by the UN to serve as a platform for raising the concerns and challenges of PWDs who represent an appreciable proportion of the world’s population
Members of the federation marked the day in the district, which was on the theme “Making the MDGs inclusive; Empowering Persons with Disabilities and their Communities around the World”, with a route march through the streets of the town to create awareness in the rural community on the need to treat children and adults with disabilities with dignity.
Mr Aniaa emphasised that over 2.8 million people with disabilities in the country were armed with the requisite tools, skills and knowledge to enter the national political life as active participants.
He, however, bemoaned the fact that in spite of these development, PWDs worldwide continued to live under poverty, diseases and hunger thus portraying them as the most vulnerable class.
According to a spokesperson for the group, PWDs are not asking for charity but rather empowerment or skill training to realise their full potential.
He solicited the support of the Bongo District Assembly, as well as heads of departments, to provide a quota for the employment of persons with disability, as well as the National Youth Employment Programme to cover PWDs.
Mr Aniaa also called on the Bongo Mutual Health Insurance Scheme to continue to support the vulnerable to enable them to access free medical care.
A director at the Assembly, Mr John Adongo, disclosed that the Assembly had approved funds for the building of a resource centre for the disabled and said work would soon begin on the project.
Presenting a paper on “Disability and Human Rights Perspective of the Millennium Development Goals,” the District Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Amos Ayuure, said the MDGs would not be achieved if policies, programmes, monitoring and evaluation of the goals did not include persons with disability.
“The international community needs urgently to act to mainstream disability in the MDG processes,” he stressed.
The Food Security and Community Rehabilitation Programmes Co-ordinator of ADDRO, an NGO, Akologo Daniel Adoliba, reaffirmed a statement the Former World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, said, that, “Unless disabled people are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015 or give every girl and boy the chance to achieve a primary education by the same date.”
According to Daniel Adoliba, disability continues to be largely ignored as a MDG issue and this must be corrected.
He suggested that PWDs should be given greater representation in programmes targeted at achieving any of the eight MDGs.
“Though the MDGs do not specifically mention human rights and disability, the implementation of the MDGs should be done in such a way that promote the human rights of PWDs,” he said.