Let’s enforce the Disability Act
When the Persons With Disabilities Act, (Act 715), was enacted in 2006, the expectation was that owners of properties would comply with provisions that require the buildings to be disability friendly.
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That had been our expectation because the law demands that public buildings be equipped with appropriate facilities to make them easily accessible to persons with disabilities (PWDs).
Regrettably, eight years down the line, many public buildings are yet to comply with this requirement.
Section 6 of the act provides: “The owner or occupier of a place to which the public has access shall provide appropriate facilities that make the place accessible to and available for use by a person with disability.”
Although the law provides punitive measures for those who do not comply, we are yet to witness a single case in which the authorities have taken on property owners who failed to provide facilities for PWDs.
But that is not surprising, because the body that enacted the law itself, Parliament, does not have appropriate facilities to make Parliament accessible.
This is why PWDs who thronged Parliament House last Wednesday to join parliamentarians to commemorate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities got stranded.
The Daily Graphic believes that the talk has gone on for far too long and it is time the authorities acted.
Oftentimes we tend to act quickly on matters that concern us personally and ignore those which are not of benefit to us directly.
We must focus on enforcing national efforts at implementing policies, laws and international treaties on the effective participation of PWDs and their basic rights. If we had enforced the laws, the Daily Graphic believes, the embarrassing situation in Parliament House last Wednesday would not have occurred.
We all have a lot of work to do to ensure that all Ghanaians, whether mentally or physically challenged, enjoy the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
This has become more imperative after the 2014 survey by the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) had established that PWDs continued to be discriminated against and deprived of their basic rights in the country.
According to the survey report, “The absence of disability access facilities in such public spaces and social amenities deny PWDs entry, thereby denying them their basic rights.”
It also mentioned discrimination and stigmatisation and low inclusion in national activities as major challenges of PWDs.
Although the Chairperson of the NCCE, Mrs Charlotte Osei, attributed the challenges facing PWDs to particularly the ignorance of the public of the Disability Act, among other factors, we believe that action speaks louder than words.
The Daily Graphic agrees with Mrs Osei that national efforts at implementing policies, laws and international treaties on the effective participation of PWDs and their basic rights need to be reinforced and enhanced to ensure that they enjoy their economic, social and political rights without hitches.
We challenge Parliament to set the pace by constructing facilities to make the House disability friendly. This must be emulated by all institutions, so that the bodies responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Disability Act will have the moral right to enforce the law.
The situation where we pass laws and fail to enforce same must stop.
Let us act now.