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August 24, 2011
New Vision, Uganda:"The hidden disabled talents"
The following information was downloaded from the mailing list of "Disability and Development" with a cooperation of the publisher, Mr. Soya Mori.
Salaseini Vosamana
Publication date: Thursday, 18th August, 2011
Alex Ndeezi
A recent World Health Organization (WHO) estimate put the number of persons with disabilities )PWD) in Uganda at 16% of the country's 33 million people, meaning that over five million people have disabilities. The report, launched in May, is designed to help countries tap the potentials of PWDs and promote disability rights. However, the real figures are likely to be higher because many disabled people are hidden from society in inaccessible rural areas.
Getting an education is nearly impossible for all, but those who come from the wealthier sectors of society. Schools are simply unable to cater for them. And even if the school is prepared to accept the child, the logistics of a child who can't walk to school each day are generally insurmountable. About 70% of children with disabilities are not getting an education because of their disabilities. However, education and training for PWDs is sometimes made possible through a variety of associations, organizations and some of the skills education training authorities. For PWDs, if getting education is difficult, getting a job is almost 10 times more difficult.
Even though the Income Tax Act makes provision for a tax incentive for employers of 5% or more PWDs, persons with disabilities make up to just 0.2% of the work force in the NGO, private sector and public sector. This is partly due to the massive shortages of low skilled jobs for which PWDs traditionally qualified. The latest statistics from UBOS/URA show that employment is increasing but in more of non-formal sector. There are many reasons for the high rates of employment of PWDs, however, one of them is because of stereotyped negative attitudes and lack understanding of what disabilities entails. Getting persons with disabilities into the workplace has many and varied benefits from decreasing the burden on social welfare to raising the morale at the workplace and increases tax revenue on employment income. However, there are companies that would like to fix persons with disabilities into the workplace but they just do not know what to do. They also do not know how disabled persons would fit into their work environment or how they could be accommodated in a building designed for the able bodied.
Part of the problem is that people have a stereotyped view of what being a person with disabilities means. The assumption is that they will be employing a person in a wheelchair. But there are a great many conditions that qualify as disabled, from deafness to autism and Down syndrome to paraplegia. Diabetes and epilepsy also qualify as disabilities, and there is talk of obesity getting included in the category as it is becoming a serious problem especially in developing and middle income countries.
Disabled people have very different needs. There is need for flexibility from the employer and the employee. A person who needs to spend a day in a week on a dialysis machine, for example, might need to accept reduced pay if the company agrees to hire them on a four-days-a-week basis. To help companies who want to tap into these potentials, persons with disabilities should be given tasks they can perform to their best capabilities and cope with modifications that can be made.
The labour department in the ministry of Gender can play an important role in ensuring that both employers and employees understand each other and are accommodative of each other's needs. In terms of the Persons with Disabilities Act 2006, employers must reasonably accommodate the needs of disabled people to enable them advance in their employment. This could, for example, involve modifying existing equipment or buying new equipment like specialised computer hardware, re-organising work stations or changing assessment materials. One of the greatest challenges physically disabled persons have is not being able to move around. Modified cars are expensive and public transport is not geared towards people with disabilities. So even when he does secure a job, a disabled person is often unable to get there. This calls for accessible and affordable public transport facilities for these categories of people. The writer is MP respresenting PWDs
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/762972
Posted by jicafriends at August 24, 2011 05:23 PM