Accra, Ghana, November 30, 2018//-Ghana’s Parliament today in a blizzard development denied Persons With Disability (PWDs) access to the Chamber.According to Parliament, Persons with Disability (walking difficulties) cannot stand on their feet when the Speaker Professor Mike Ocquaye rises as everyone else is expected to do.
Consequently, Persons with Disability were made to watch proceedings from the visitors waiting area.
Alexander Tetteh is one of the Persons With Disability denied access to the Chamber of Parliament.
Mr. Tetteh, who is the President of the Centre for the Employment of Persons with Disability, said this was prompted by an incident on Thursday.
“They said that an incident happened yesterday [Thursday], where one person could not stand and they saw that he was a person with disability and for that matter, they think that they should prevent anybody who cannot stand [from going in]”, he told an Accra-based Citi FM.
Following this, he has called on the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Oquaye, to intervene. He was part of Civil Society Organisations leaders who went to parliament to press for passage of RTI Bill into law.
“I feel sad. I feel that my rights as a citizen to observe Parliament have been denied and I think that the Speaker must address this.”
“The fact that I cannot stand, does not mean that I disrespect any laws or I disrespect any authorities. It is because of my disabilities. It is no fault of mine to become disabled,” he remarked.
Before this incident, the leadership of Parliament, particularly the Minority Leader, had to intervene so that other members of the RTI Coalition and other Civil Society Organisations could enter Parliament’s gallery despite an earlier agreement, FM station reported.
They were denied entry because they were in the coalition’s red branded t-shirts.
There is a sense of general disregard for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in Ghana with many physically-challenged people and advocacy groups expressing concerns about the treatment of PWDs.
While disbursements to the PWDs have often delayed, arguments have been made that certain establishments and social policies are not disability-friendly.
1 years of enacting the Disability Act
Ghana’s Disability Law, 2006 (Act 715) was passed by Parliament in 2006, aimed at ending the discrimination that faces people with disabilities but the ten-year moratorium given by the Act for old buildings to be renovated to disability-friendly status has indeed not been met.
It is worth noting that about ten percent of Ghana’s population are Persons with Disability (PWD). Although their rights are guaranteed both by Ghana’s Constitution and by International Conventions, in reality these provisions have offered them very little actual protection against discrimination.
People with disabilities in Ghana are often regarded as unproductive and incapable of contributing in a positive way to society. Instead of being viewed as assets, they are rather seen as constituting an economic burden on the family and the society at large, which leaves them in a vicious cycle of poverty.
African Eye Report/Citinewsroom
