Prof Mike Oquaye (left) with some of the PWDs
Persons living with disabilities have criticized successive governments for not prioritizing policies that can offer them job opportunities.
According to them, lack of job opportunities has been the bane of their economic poverty and social predicaments. Persons with disabilities with better educational qualifications are painfully denied jobs simply because they have one disability or the other which does not make them unfit to work effectively and efficiently.
This major concern was raised by people with disabilities at this year’s ‘Speaker’s Breakfast Forum’ organized on Monday in Parliament under the theme: “Disability Inclusion in Ghana”. The forum brought together various representatives of disability groups in the country.
They took turns to lambast various governments for not thinking about how they can survive economically and also take care of their families.
The Central Regional President of the Ghana Blind Union, George Frimpong, said the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government should allocate a certain percentage of its flagship programmes to provide employment for people with disabilities.
According to him, persons with disabilities could have been considered for the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme and the ‘Nation’s Builders Corps’ programme initiated by this government.
He said they can also do farming and earn a living for themselves under the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs”, adding that in the Central Region, some members of the blind association have gone into rabbit rearing and selling to make ends meet.
The Executive Director of Ghana National Association of the Deaf, Jeventus Duorinoah, said he has a very good degree from the university but any time he applies for a job he is rejected because of his condition. He added that such discriminatory attitude does not encourage parents to sponsor their children with disabilities to the highest level of education, knowing very well that after school there would be no jobs for such people.
The main speaker at the Breakfast Forum who is also a visually impaired person and the Coordinator of the Assistive Technology Unit at the University of Ghana, Alexander Bankole Williams, said that persons with disabilities have come to their wits end as a result of continuous discrimination, sidelining and exclusion in the society despite the passage of the Person With Disability Act – Act 715 – that is supposed to provide legal protection for persons with disabilities.
He said that even when it comes to preservation of fundamental human rights, they are persistently discriminated against.
He said it is provided in the law that sign language interpreters should be available at every hospital for deaf patients to be able to communicate well with medical officers for proper medical attention but because they are not available, there have been situations where deaf people are given wrong medication; even some have had their wombs removed as result of communication problems.
He said the little assistance that is coming from government’s District Assembly Common Fund (DCAF) is also being abused by people responsible for its disbursement.
He therefore called for the decoupling of the National Council on Persons with Disabilities from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection for greater autonomy.
Another participant, Samuel Hayford, from the University of Education at Winneba said that there should be a system where children born with disability are registered and their parents given the necessary assistance by the government to take care of them in order to help these people.
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof Mike Oquaye, said there should be a complete overhaul of the existing laws on disability to allow for better inclusion of persons with disabilities in building the nation.
He also urged the government to review all policies relating to persons with disabilities in order to make them more useful to the nation.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr