This will be a fair question to ask: how long will persons living with disabilities cry out for help and attention before they are given the needed attention?
Accessibility and acceptance continues to be some of the biggest challenges that PWDs face in this country and this has been of great concern to the community.
In a video shared with GhanaWeb by the Executive President of the Center for Employment of Persons with Disabilities (CEPD), Alex Tetteh, a middle-aged woman is captured sharing her frustrations as she boards a public vehicle ahead of a long journey.
In the video, this woman explains how unfriendly the Ghanaian system is to PWDs vis a vis the situations that exist in other parts of the world.
"The best practice was that as I am about to get on this bus, there would have been an arrangement for me to easily get on it but here I am; I am about to be carried on someone's back before I am able to join the bus. It's very bad," the woman said in the native Twi language.
Aside the discomfort in enduring this on a daily basis, the lady laments how she has to bear the associated risks including the fear of contracting COVID-19 from her helpers whose status is always unknown to her.
In what will follow, the video captures the way she is carried and then sent into the bus.
This, Alex Tetteh believes, is unacceptable and is a big dent on all the efforts by persons like himself and his other colleagues who are fighting daily to ensure that PWDs receive as much attention and care to make their lives more comfortable than presently exists.
"Look how this lady is being carried like a lagged and touching all her vital parts, just to enter a bus. The same process will be done when she is getting down. This lady might not go out until she gets to her destination.
"Is this not a disgrace to the state and particularly Parliament that passed the disability law? It's also definitely a shame to the disability movement. We call ourselves presidents and chairmen of disability organizations and we allow this to happen to ourselves. Let's wake up," he lamented.
The middle-aged woman captured in the video has therefore appealed to the government and all stakeholders to come to their aid and save them from this continued challenge.
