If we are not discussing PWDs, this GeyHey Muslim student fasting issue is needless

My night was cut short but it culminated into early morning thoughts that have led to me writing this. Besides, only yesterday, I reported on an issue that directly concerns one of the most marginalized groups of persons in our part of the world: Persons Living With Disabilities (PWDs).

In that report, I shared the story of how a middle-aged woman struggled to get onto a bus, in an attempt to go on a long journey and how clearly unwelcoming our society is getting for these brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and even friends of ours who live their lives everyday thinking of the most comfortable ways out. The way it is, for most of their lives, it is as if they do not exist and it goes back to how we treat even the most basic issues relating to them.

Faith matters, alike ethnic-related issues, are not exactly the kinds of things I love to discuss especially on social media although I admit there have been times that I have engaged in very brief in-person conversations on such matters, while ensuring that I do not overstep into the arena of judgments.

Besides, matters of faith are of the heart and that is why for someone like the now Evangelist Patricia Oduro Koranteng (formerly known infamously as Nana Agradaa), I am of the opinion that it is not in my place to question or otherwise her claim to finding salvation and how she has turned on a new leaf. Respectfully, I do not have that right to discuss whether or not she is telling us a true tale or whether this is yet another well-written script.

A few times too, because I have particularly close friends who are Muslims, I have thought about making posts on such ragging matters before but again, there is that restraining still voice inside of me that keeps my fingers away from the keyboard.

And without sounding disrespectful, this is purely one of the reasons I believe deep down my soul that the subject of whether or not it is appropriate for a school to deny a faith-believing, faith-practicing person from exercising one of the doctrines that authenticate the doctrines they live by is misplaced. Such issues sincerely aren’t as weighty as I imagine they should be.

If that middle-aged woman about to join that public transport can be so embittered that today, in 2021, there is still such a sea of difference in our society’s attempts at ensuring that PWDs are comfortable enough to go about their daily lives, then I find a weightier matter here.

And because we are in an era of the coronavirus pandemic, replaying those totally embarrassing and devastating visuals of that middle-aged physically-challenged woman in my mind’s eyes and realizing how endangering it was that the able-bodied men who were kind enough to carry her could have been carriers, or carriers of yet another easily-communicable disease, it frightens me.

When the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, addressed the nation through his representative at the Ministry of Finance at the time, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, at this year’s budget reading, all that was heard with regards what is being done or will be done for the PWDs community was this:

“Under the Presidential Empowerment for Men and Women Entrepreneurs with Disability (PEMED/PEWED), GH¢4.0 million was disbursed to 2,145 entrepreneurs with disability. In 2021, a total of 2,000 additional beneficiaries will be supported financially.”

Additionally, the statement budget statement read in part that, “In 2021, the Ministry will undertake further stakeholder consultations on the Affirmative Action Bill to cater for the needs of all vulnerable groups including persons with disability (PWA).”

The announcement that, “in line with the Ministry’s mandate to secure inclusion and protection of the rights of persons with disability, the Ministry undertook stakeholder consultations and prepared a draft Amendment to the Persons with Disability Act, 2016 (Act 715) to conform to provisions in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD),” sounds like a good move – on paper, but what’s the reality on the grounds with acceptance and socially-friendly measures for our brothers and sisters living with all these physical limitations?

On social media today, there is so much passion accompanying the discussions people are having on this subject matter of the Wesley Girls’ Senior High School denying a Muslim student from partaking in the Ramadan (fasting), as well as the rather unfortunate back and forth between the school administration, the Ghana Education Service, the hierarchy of the Muslim community in Ghana, and the mother church of the school, the Methodist Church.

It’s that same energy I am concerned about and particularly too about how selective it can be. Is it possible that a time will come for the whole nation to also rally around such a matter as pushing the agenda for the inclusion of PWDs and giving them equally available space to also breathe properly?

The common “disability is not inability” phrase that comes up from time to time to address the uneasy climb-up-the-ladder by a physically-challenged person as is in the case of the current Minister for the Oti region, Joshua Makubu, but respectfully, that is not enough. It is the same way that, for so long, the campaign for women-inclusion has been trumpeted so much that gradually, the pendulum seems to be leveling. This is why I think that it is high time we also focused our lenses to weightier matters like those that concern PWDs in this country too.

It is not even enough for the media to project the struggles or the success stories, or even the challenges of the PWDs community when all that does is to only close another chapter of the conversation almost immediately after that. I am reminded of the talented Jennifer Dede, a visually-impaired second-year student of the Okuapeman Senior High School in the Eastern region, who became a social media sensation after a video showing her preparing gari - her mother’s business, went viral. I am also troubled in my spirit that when her story broke, many were impressed with her perseverance and her determination in this life, as well as her totally captivating eloquence.

Yet, that has been it for now, and the issues she raised with regards how challenging it is for her to even navigate school (and take note that her school is only one of many regular schools in the country that admits visually-impaired students) without most of the time, the help of someone.

Mr. Alex Tetteh is the Executive President of the Center for Employment of Persons with Disabilities (CEPD) and his life, although is now a far-better version of what existed in the past, has neither had it easy. Daily, he is on the move, fighting and trying to find easy ways out for others like him to be comfortable, amidst the glaring difficulties he faces all the time.

A paradigm shift is needed and the passion with which we push for what we describe as wrong or archaic to be righted is dearly admired but let’s stop the sycophancy and address weightier issues with equal force. And when I say that we are not nice people, and that we are not as ‘hospitable’ as we claim to be, it is because what the reality is, is that, the people we are nice and hospitable to are not the neighbors who are walking distances away from us. Instead, those accolades only become noticeable when we show our white teeth to our neighbors beyond our territorial borders yet disgust the person next door.

It’s not a perfect society and it surely won’t be perfect in the next day, but a little more effort is needed and until we stop pretending that we are concerned in the least about the wellbeing of Persons Living with Disabilities, this whole charade will continue to haunt us. The streets are neither getting emptier of beggars and security is not any better. These, surely, are the weightier matters.