The Ghana Federation of the Disabled is angry at President Mahama for neglecting the challenges of the physically challenged in his State of the Nation Address.
The group said they are unimpressed that President Mahama failed to address their concerns.
Advocacy Officer of the Federation, Isaac Tuggun told Joy News in an interview that their members feel neglected.
He said special schools in the country have been increasingly unable to cater for their basic needs due to the lack of support from Government.
“We were expecting that touching on education, the President was going to say how education was going to be made accessible to people with disability. We did not hear anything like the provision of assistive technology for the visually impaired to also participate in education.”
Mr Tuggun said the President also failed to mention what was being done to improve the quality of education in special schools and that “we realise that we are completely out…as far as education is concerned persons with disability were not part of it, so all that he talked about was education meant for other people.”
Page 12 of the President’s State of the Nation Address only mentioned that physically challenged persons will be provided adequate access to public buildings and a new youth employment model put together for them.
The address said “As we work to meet the needs of people who live with disabilities through insistence on the provision of access to new and existing infrastructure, the provision of teaching and learning aids among others, Government is in discussions with the leadership of the Federation for Persons with Disability to roll out this year, a new and suitable Youth Employment Model for five thousand (5000) persons with disability.”
But the Federation of the Disabled, says with the history of unfulfilled promises, they will closely monitor these new promises.
“For the past two years, we have met the President on two occasions at the Flagstaff House. He spoke well and talked about ensuring that things will work well but when it comes to implementation that is where the problem is.
“We are happy to hear about the new measures but we will follow up to ensure that the models are rolled out”, Mr Tuggun said.
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