Accra, Nov. 30, GNA - The Ghana Federation of the Disabled on Thursday expressed concern about the lack of information on how they could access the five percent of the District Assembly Common Fund allocated to Persons with Disability (PWD) in every district. The association therefore called on government to operationalise the draft modalities developed by the Ghana Federation of the Disabled on how people with disabilities could access their share of the fund. The association explained that the fund was allocated by government to discourage disabled persons from begging on the street and enhance their lives by accessing the fund for income generating ventures. The fund, if accessed, could also be used to develop infrastructure which are disabled friendly as well as organize training workshops for both members and non members disabled.

Ms Sefakor Pomeyie, Representative of the Federation, addressing a press conference urged government to serve notices of the directive to all officials responsible for implementing the policy in the various regions and districts to circumvent the situation where people with disabilities were often turned down when they attempted to access the fund.

The press conference was a climax to the celebration of a lobby week where disabled were taken through a workshop to enable them to monitor and evaluate poverty reduction programmes and projects. Ms Pomeyie called on District Assemblies to mainstream provisions made for people with disabilities in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II in their medium term development plans for implementation. =93PWDs urge government to intensify effort to improve access to employable skills training programme through the provisions of a resource centre in each district.

The employable skills training should be followed with micro credit support to PWDs interest in each skills so that they can maximize their potentials. Employable skills training should be based on modern trends and technologies which are PWD ICT friendly training programmes.

On education, the association called for the review of the computer placement system to recognize the blind and deaf. A lot of deaf students failed English partly because they normally did not have interpreters and even when there were interpreters the phonetics and semantics were difficult to grasp.

Ms Pomeyie said though the health insurance scheme was laudable, most people with disability found it difficult to register even though some money had been set aside purposely for the disabled. She requested that part of their fund should be used to register unemployed disabled people.

Mr. Siafa Kamara, Chief Executive Officer of SEND Foundation, a public policy oriented development organization that promotes livelihood security and equality in society, pledged his organization's commitment to support the welfare of people with disability. He said a lobby team had been formed to discuss issues that bordered on the welfare of the disabled and urged the media to be advocates of such issues.

Dr Bashiru Korey, who chaired the function, said persons with disabilities were capable of exhibiting their talents and called for a level playing field to enable equal development for normal people and those with disabilities.

If we have a level playing field for PWDs, we may be doing it for the entire society since we do not know when one could be disabled, he said.

Dr Korey stressed the need for the media to be advocates of issues affecting the disabled, saying, 93The media can not play a watchdog role of society well if they exclude 10 percent of the citizenry.=94