By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
The Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Person with Disability, Saa Lamin Korteque in an exclusive interview said that the commission or government cannot forcefully remove disable beggars out of the street until they have an alternative plan for them.
This came as a result of the increasing number of disable beggars parading the city on daily basis and has their presence is causing embarrassment to the state and foreign visitors.
“We won’t force them to get out of the street until we have an alternative plans for them. It takes resources to get them out of the street and the resources we are looking for must be sustainable. We don’t want to take them out of the street today and tomorrow we don’t have money to give them, they will go back to the street,” Korteque said
He added that the money they had been receiving for disables are not enough to take them out of the street to give them proper care.
Korteque explains that, it had been the desire of the government to take disables off the streets this has been a long time plan, but as a commission we have been looking at the sustainability plans for our colleagues disables.
“We need a sustainable program that can empower them, like making education free for them, creating training centers for them and give them the modern day job requirements skills, and entrepreneur skills,” he said.
He narrated that disables had been discriminated and stigmatized and many of them had dropped out of school due to provocation and most schools and universities environment are not disable friendly or inclusivity these are some of the many challenges we are getting as a commission.
In explaining the successes of disables, NCPD Executive Secretary explained that since the introduction of the Free Quality Education, they have had more disables in primary and secondary schools on to universities.
“I can tell you authoritatively, we have more disables in tertiary institutions than ever before. Those disables that cannot afford to pay for their fees are now in schools. Last year, we have one disable person graduating from law school and this year we have two,” he affirmed.
He further that there is need to do more as a commission and as a country.
“As a country, we are not there yet for disables. The problems are still there, and we are grappling with the fact that disables are still being stigmatized and discriminated in this modern day. Some of them don’t get employed even if they’re qualified,” he said.
He also expressed that begging is a social issue and not everyone in the street begging is a disable and people with no disability are on the street begging and some even fake disability and when people see them, they class them as disable. I can tell you there are few disables on the street begging as people are assuming that there are huge numbers of them,” NCPD executive secretary reinforced.
He clarified that the disable Act is not dead as people are claiming. There is a United Nation Convention Right for Person with Disability (UNCRPD) which is the international legal instrument for disables to make sure that government take action and implement programs that will improve the life of people with disabilities.
“So as a country we have ratified it in our law and it came into being in 2007 and has been signed in parliament in 2009. I think what we have not done is to sign the optional protocol but we will sign and ratify it furthering to that we have domesticated the international instruments for disability which means we have the Person with Disability Act of 2011 which is currently under review, and the Person with Disability Act gave a lot of right to people with disability. It is the act that mandated that it should be a commission to implement programs and give respect to people with disabilities so the Act is not dead,” he concluded.
