Accra, June 26, GNA - Government has voted 4.1 billion cedis to support Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) to enhance their economic living conditions, Mrs Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, Deputy Minister of Manpower Youth and Employment, said on Tuesday. She said the amount was an improvement on last year's provision, which was two billion and one billion in 2005. "It will increase as the years go by," she added.

Mrs Osei-Opare said this when she chaired a day's public education on the Disability Act 715, which was passed in June last year to enable PWDs to enjoy their rights enshrined in Article 29 of the 1992 constitution.

The forum for stakeholders under the theme: "Promoting and Protecting the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Ghana" was organized by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) with support from US Agency for International Development (USAID). It was to solicit support from stakeholders to aid the implementation process and make life meaningful for PWDs. Mrs Osei-Opare noted that there were some PWDs whose disabilities were so severe that government needed to support and empower them economically so they could also survive. "This demonstrates government's sensitivity to the plight of our dear brothers and sisters who unfortunately are disabled."

She noted that government had again started a social grant scheme on pilot basis to assist the severely incapacitated PWDs and that would run for a five-year period. "By then, we would have covered almost everybody that might be in need of this assistance." Mrs. Osei-Opare pledged her Ministry's support in ensuring the full implementation of the Act to make life comfortable and enjoyable by all PWDs.

Dr. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua of the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, who took the participants through the Act, said the transition of the Act made provision for a 10-year moratorium for compliance with the provisions on access and mobility because of substantial investment needed to make all existing public infrastructure disability-friendly. He said the Act would ensure the creation of PWD desks in all employment centres throughout the country and provide for the formation of a National Council on Persons with Disabilities as well as a Board to assist in smooth implementation.

He explained that the National House of Chiefs had an important role in dealing with needs and dignity of PWDs as the House was enjoined by Article 272 of the Constitution to "undertake an evaluation of traditional customs and usages that are outmoded and socially harmful". The provision, he said, was reinforced by Article 26(2), which stated that, "all customary practices which dehumanise or are injurious to the physical and mental well-being of a person are prohibited".

Dr. Appeagyei called on chiefs to promote the positive side of their culture that treated PWDs with dignity and respect. "Article 39 (1) of the Constitution stipulates; 'subject to clause (2) of this article, the State shall take steps to encourage the integration of appropriate customary values into the informal education and the conscious introduction of cultural dimensions to relevant aspects of national planning.'"

He called on the Police to enforce the Beggars and Destitute Decree to give PWDs some form of security and dignity, whilst government also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Person with Disability, which had already been signed. "Government should also popularise the African Decade of the Disabled Person which started in 1999 and would end in 2009 and harmonise disability laws in the ECOWAS sub-region to facilitate movement of PWDs."

Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Executive Director of CDD, said stigmatisation and discrimination accorded the disabled in Ghana was firmly grounded in the Ghanaian culture, beliefs and attitudes, which had caused social exclusion.

"These are factors that hinder the smooth integration of the physically challenged in society making it difficult to secure their civil rights and there is the need to create awareness in the public for attitudinal change towards the disabled," he added. He called on stakeholders to ensure the smooth implementation of the Act and suggested that some of the provisions could be looked at in the short-term whilst the medium and long term ones could be looked at later.

Dr Yaw Ofori-Debra, President of the Ghana Federation of the Disabled (GFD), commended government for all efforts in ensuring that they lived comfortably.

He, however, cautioned that service providers and other institutions, which would fail to implement government directives, would be taken to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice to face the law.

Dr. Ofori-Debra called on the District Assemblies to make available to them the share of the District Assemblies' Common Fund meant for them so they could also benefit from that facility as directed by government.

Sheikh Nuamah, an Islamic Cleric and Reverend Fred Deegbe, who represented the Christian Council, condemned the practice of some religious people who discriminated against PWDs.

They also condemned the attitude of some PWDs who had capitalized on their disability to resort to begging as a means of survival and called on GFD and the Labour Commission to find a solution to driving them away from the streets since that might endanger their lives.