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Disability not panacea for begging and idleness

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 Source: GNA

Kumasi, Aug. 15, GNA - Mr Karimu Iddrisu, Executive Director of Centre for Advancement of the Marginalized Persons (CAMP), a Non-Governmental Organization has advised people with disability not to use their situation as a panacea for street begging and idleness.

He said they should rather be more resourceful and think of how best they would work to raise their standard of living.

Mr Iddrisu, who is a disabled, said their disability could be a blessing to unleash their God-given potentials to improve on their conditions and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.

He was addressing the opening session of a three-day workshop on entrepreneurial skills and financial management for 30 selected disabled women in Kumasi.

It was organized by the Ashanti Regional wing of the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD) and sponsored by the African Women Development Fund, an international NGO.

The workshop was to equip the participants to be more business-oriented and to be credit worthy.

Mr Iddrisu stressed the need for financial institutions, corporate bodies and policy makers to offer the needed assistance and support to people with disabilities.

"It is the only way they can unleash their God-given potentials to make them self-reliant and independent," he said.

Madam Margaret Mensah, Ashanti Regional Chairperson of the Women's Wing of GSPD, said the participants, mostly self-employed, were drawn from the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in the region.

She was full of praises to the sponsors for coming to their aid and appealed to other NGO's to emulate.

The chairperson called on members to be serious with their work and endeavour to put any money that came into their hands into profitable business enterprises.

She urged them to be resourceful and active and always have at the back of their minds that 93they can do it if they really mean to."

Source: GNA