NCPD tasks media practitioners to champion the interest of PWDs
The National Council on Person’s with Disability (NCPD) has tasked media practitioners to help ensure that Persons With Disabilities (PWDS) are given equal access and voice in society.
Madam Esther Akua Gyamfi, Executive Secretary of NCPD noted that PWDs should be addressed as people with rights and not a group of people who needs to be pitied or people who need to showcase their weaknesses in order to attract attention.
She said such an approach would help to ensure PWDs realize their fullest possible potential.
Madam Gyamfi made this appeal at a media sensitization workshop in Accra.
The meeting aimed at keeping media practitioners abreast with issues concerning PWDs to further help reinforce the need to champion their interest within the media space.
Madam Gyamfi who highlighted the discrimination against PWDs, also underscored the need for media practitioners to use the right terminologies in addressing PWDs.
She said the society has neglected PWDs in various ways, however, the good news was that the gap had been identified, adding that “without the inclusion of PWDs, Ghana can never boast of the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
The Executive Secretary recounted that the gap that had been identified needs to be filled, and that was why the NCPD existed.
Madam Gyamfi stated that it was also in this direction that the Inter -Ministerial Coordinating Committee funded the development of a framework dubbed:”Framework and Strategies for Mainstreaming Disability into the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
She said the framework was to guide them in the inception of their programmes, policies and projects, so that PWDs in their communities would be well included in society; thus, talents and potentials in them could be harnessed for the purpose of SDGs and national development.
Madam Gyamfi said hopefully, on 27th June, this year the Council would embark on an exercise to sensitize the MMDAs in the respective use of the framework and strategies for mainstreaming disability.
She said they would also be sensitized them on the Ghana Accessibility Standard for the Built-Environment (GASB), adding that this programme was to make the built environment accessible for PWDs.
“And then the Council will sensitize the MMDAs on the reporting format on the management and disbursement of the three percent District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF)”, she noted.
She further said that so far there had not been any reporting format.
The reporting format only has to do with the reporting requirement from the MMDAs on the management and disbursement of the three per cent of DACF that they have to submit monthly to the Council.
Source: GNA