"The disabled does not need anybody's sympathy"

Koforidua, Aug. 31, GNA - The Legal Adviser to the Ghana Federation of the Disabled (GFD), Dr Bashiru I. Koree, has said the disabled did not need the sympathy of other citizens but the removal of policies and physical structures that handicapped the disabled and excluded them from many activities of society.

He emphasized that what the disabled needed most was the recognition of their rights and the provision of facilities that would make them play their roles as full members of society. Dr Koree was speaking at the formal opening of a day's public forum on the National Disability Law, organized by the GFD and sponsored by the Right and Voices Initiative (RAVI), an NGO at Koforidua on Wednesday.

He explained that, when the barriers placed on the way of the disabled persons were removed, it would enable them to fully participate in socio-economic life of society and help remove the poverty facing many of them.

An Assistant Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mr Tetteh Quarshie, said the disability law was important to everybody, because every citizen was a potential disabled person. He said it was not everybody, who was born with disability and advised the participants to ensure that, what they would learn about the law should be transmitted to other disabled citizens.

Mr Quarshie called on the leadership of their federation to educate their members on how to access the five per cent of the funds allocated to the district assemblies under the District Assembly's Common Fund for the economic empowerment of people with disability. The National President of GFD, Mr Yaw Ofori Debrah, in a welcome address, explained that the forum was to be used to educate disabled persons on their rights and responsibility, as spelt out in the Disability Law.

He called on persons with disability to claim the rights provided under the law and to defend them at all times. The Deputy Eastern Regional Director of National Commission on Civic Education, Mr Lord Larbi, observed that, the existence of the law alone was not enough to help remove the barriers that impaired the progress of people with disability and therefore, urged them to demand the rights provided for them from government.