Persons with disabilities deserve to be a priority

 

I would like to thank the Vision Group for the kind and compassionate heart it has extended to one Ssozi Rashid, a blind student of Mass Communication at Makerere University. 

 

Having defied all the odds against him by maneuvering through a number of obstacles and challenges in his social and education career, Ssozi had got stack at the eleventh hour because he did not have 400,000- shillings required by the university as the charge for two missed exams before he could complete his course. 

 

Fortunately, Vision Group has offered to meet the cost. This is a very commendable gesture which should be emulated by other corporate bodies, organizations and individuals because there is no any better way of paying back to the community than identifying with and supporting the most needy and disadvantaged people like Ssozi in that community.

 

However, as Ssozi’s hope and assurance of completing his dream course is restored, there are many others at Makerere University and other institutions of learning who are as brilliant and determined like him but could not continue with their education because of lack of necessary facilitation. 

 

The findings of my post graduate academic research that was conducted at Makerere University in 2009 reveals that in spite of government sponsorship of disabled students under the affirmative action policy, the number of  students with disabilities at the university is far lower than expected. 

 

One of the major reasons for this state of affairs is that there is lack of sensitization and awareness campaigns to the public about the availability of such an opportunity for students with disabilities. 

 

This is due to the fact that some people still considers disability as inability and hence, some people with disabilities are kept away from the public.

 

The lucky ones who access the information and gets admitted some of them do not complete their courses because of many challenges ranging from stigmatization, lack of proper communication to the blind, the deaf, competition for seats with able students in lecture rooms, to lack of enough money to buy some material things they need for their education, which are more expensive than the tuition paid by the government yet such things are not covered by the policy.

 

For example, Braille - a device used by blind students for writing can go up to 1.5 million shillings and they are imported.

According to Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Section 5 of Uganda’s Persons with Disability Act, 2006, and Article 35 of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda among others, people with disabilities just like others, have a right to education and they call for appropriate measures to enable them realize their full potential. 

 

Also, Article 3 (d) of the World Declaration for Higher Education (1998), and the government of Uganda Education White Paper (1992) calls for active facilitation of students with disabilities in accessing and continuing with their education in order to enable them cope with the demands of studying.

 

In spite of all these, UNESCO (2010) discovered that 98 percent of children with disabilities in developing countries including Uganda are not in school. In addition, the data for the 2002 Population and Housing Census in Uganda reveals that about 90 percent of people with disabilities did not study beyond primary education.

 

Basing on the above information, we cannot afford to continue neglecting persons with disabilities because;

• World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics reveals that persons with disabilities make up to approximately 10 percent of the total population of Uganda. Such a population is too big to be neglected.

 

• Secondly, most of the students with disabilities who have got a chance to access education have proved to be very brilliant.

 

• Also, education being a tool to empowerment, by enabling them to attain the necessary education and skills, it would help them overcome some of the challenges they face like poverty in addition of instilling in them a sense of dignity and self worth. 

 

In view of this therefore, the government, nongovernmental organizations and corporate bodies are called upon to rescue the persons with disabilities from their predicament by creating other policies to supplement on the existing one on admission so as to provide an environment which is user friendly and favourable for their learning and on job. It is through this way that the world would be made a better place for them to live in.