President launches braille version of NDC manifesto
President John Dramani Mahama on Monday stated that his administration has a lot of respect and special recognition for persons with disability throughout the country.
“The NDC is using the novelty manifesto to underline its commitment to its social democratic credentials and has always led the way in the course of the disability believing that disability is not inability,” President Mahama said.
The programme was attended by Ministers of state and supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In Ghana, persons with disability make up of three per cent of the national population and four per cent of them are visually impaired.
President Mahama said the fact that the NDC government was the first to appoint a visually-impaired person as Minister of State gave credence to its respect and recognition of the disabled.
He described Dr Henry Seidu Danaa, who is the Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs and contesting as Parliamentary candidate of the Party in the Wa East Constituency as a very capable and hard-working Minister who had helped Cabinet to become sign language compliant.
President Mahama who expressed confidence that Dr Danaa would win the seat, said:” I am sending a signal to Parliament to be ready to receive him. Parliament will have to be compliant The Hansard and other papers would have to be in braille.”
On the NDC 2016 manifesto, President Mahama said it spelt out various measures to push the interests of people with disabilities and the NDC, in the next term, would encourage the learning of sign language at the various levels of education to improve its communication system.
President Mahama also stated that the NDC would improve targeting of social protection interventions.
He said more than 10,000 disabled persons had been registered freely to the National Health Insurance Scheme, while about 4,000 of them had also been drafted into the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP).
“I have asked the NYEP to employ a further 6,000 to make it 10, 000,” he said.
Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said 52,082 persons with disabilities are benefitting from the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty programme.
She said the government would continue to pay attention to the unique needs of people with disabilities.
Dr Danaa said the launch of the braille version of the NDC manifesto was a great event in the country.
“The launch marks another milestone because it indicates clearly the way forward in the implementation of the actualisation of the social democracy principles of the NDC,” he said.
Source: GNA