As part of ongoing interventions to improve livelihoods and wellbeing of Persons Living With Disability (PWD), the government has handed over 20,000 wheelchairs to the Ghana Federation of Disabilities Organisations. The presentation was done in partnership with the World Bank.
The manual and powered wheelchairs are to be distributed by the Ministry of Health, through the various district health directorates, to the PWDs. This is to enhance personal mobility, a precondition for enjoying human rights and living in dignity. It will equally assist the persons with disabilities in becoming more productive members of the communities.
Fair, inclusive society
Handing over the wheelchairs at a brief ceremony in Accra yesterday, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said the donation was evidence of Government’s renewed commitment to building a fair and inclusive society.
According to him, a fare and inclusive society will ensure that all citizens share in the country’s wealth and prosperity, irrespective of their background.
The Vice-President was assisted by the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, and the World Bank Country Lead for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Dr Anthony Seddoh, during the presentation.
Challenging times
He stated that the past one year had been challenging for many Ghanaians because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Problems of social equity, how to defend the weak and most vulnerable in society, how to provide social housing, how to improve equitable access to health care to all citizens in the country regardless of where they live, how to ensure increased access to the education of all Ghanaian children, have always been at the core of our social policy challenges.
“These challenges have always been there. COVID-19 just amplified the challenges,” he said.
He added that persons with disabilities are always confronted with these challenges which prevent them from having a decent quality of life and fulfilling their true potential.
He, however noted that “the Government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is not insensitive to these challenges, hence the implementation of several initiatives to ease and to eliminate the obstacles many of you face in your everyday lives.”
Fixing the challenges
Some of the initiatives undertaken since 2017, the Vice-President noted, include the presentation of GHC4 million to 2,000 disabled men and women entrepreneurs under the Presidential Empowerment for Male Entrepreneurs with Disability (PEMED) and the Presidential Empowerment for Women Entrepreneurs with Disability (PEWED), respectively in 2020. The government has also handed over 10,000 hospital beds to the Minister of Health for distribution across the country.
He added that through the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), government provided students living with disability in selected tertiary institutions with assistive technology-enabled devices and training to promote their digital inclusion in 2019. It also provided 240 fit-for-purpose gender and disability friendly school sanitation facilities to over 231,870 school pupils of low-income communities in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) through the GAMA Sanitation and Water Project.
“Government is also exploring opportunities to remove existing barriers in public buildings, educational systems, healthcare and in the job market to provide opportunities for all. The challenge for us is how our collective actions can minimize some of the circumstances that deny other citizens the benefits of personal mobility,” he added.
He cited World Health Organisation reports which indicate that except for infectious diseases such as polio, malaria, and meningitis, the foremost cause of disability is road accidents. Dr Bawumia therefore urge road users to abide by the traffic rules and regulations.
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