The National Commission on Disabilities (NCD) is urging all Government agencies to encompass persons with disabilities in their policy documents.
GINA said yesterday that this call was made by Members of the Commission and the Private Sector Commission, during a meeting with Minister within the Ministry of Social Protection, Simona Broomes.
The NCD is on a sensitisation drive to ensure public places are as friendly as possible to persons with disabilities.
The 2002 census puts the number of people with disabilities in Guyana at 50,000. According to Beverley Pile, the NCD Executive Secretary, the Commission is not a services’ body but rather a policy making entity.
She told GINA that its main functions are to advise Government on all issues relating to people with disability, set standards within which stakeholders should operate in developing programmes, and provide services, etc. in the field.
Pile said that while this sensitisation process is to plan activities for December, the Commission will be using it to engage all public offices and private organisations. Areas of attention, GINA said will be the installation of ramps, placing yellow borders on stairs, establishing a disability space, and including sign language on Government programmes and newscasts.
“We want to start with the Ministries. We want to ensure that each ministry within its policy will be catering for persons with disabilities…in other words, we would not have to come to you and ask you to do something for persons with disabilities, it would have been written in your policy document. So it’s from that point of view that the Commission will advocate to the various entities and Ministries to ensure that policy documents provide for persons with disabilities and that they implement what is in the policy,” Pile stressed.
Broomes revealed that the building that the Ministry is looking to relocate to, will cater for persons with disabilities. In the interim, the Ministry will be painting the stairs and installing the ramp at its current location.
The Minister said she will be exploring possible collaboration with the Commission to ensure that disabled persons in the Hinterland are represented. She concurred with the call for sign language to be included on government programmes and newscasts.
