Disability Inclusion In Ghana

Have you ever wondered why people living with disability fared everyday without easy access to public places such as office buildings, transport stations, schools and lecture halls as well as social centres.

What caught my attention last Monday at Tema Station in Accra was very heartbreaking. A man walking with crutches went to board a bus. He struggled to enter the bus with his crutches with a pathetic expression on his face, which indicates that he was enduring the pains inorder to grab a seat.

The frustrated man placed the crutches somewhere and crawled on his stomach onto the bus. All this while, passengers in the bus were busy pressing their mobiles phones in an unsympathising manner.

This brings to fore, the discussion on how policy makers in the country have since neglected people living with disability to suffer discrimination. Many continue to wonder why government pay little or no attention to disabled persons in their policy making and development of social infrastructure to aid disabled persons live a normal life like anyone on earth.

Such category of people in society continues to face social injustices in our educational institutions where the architectural design of the buildings are not disability friendly. Most of the school facilities subject disabled persons to severe torture with staircases that do not have walking frames or elevators.

According to the world bank’s findings, people living with disability makeup 10% of the world’s population and its associated with 20% of global poverty. The biggest worry is that are enough structure to cater for the percentage of disabled people in our part of the world?

Policy makers must wake up from the deep slumber and enforce The Persons with Disability Act, 2006 (Act 715) to ensure that social centres and public facilities are disability-friendly to make life worth living for them. Public and private schools must be designed with facilities to aid them access lecture halls etc. Roads, transport stations, hospitals and other public places must designed with these people in mind.