By Donstance Koroma
The Program Manager, National Commission for Persons with Disability (NCDP), Tamba S.P. Mondeh, has, in an exclusive interview with this medium, stated that there is no policy with regards providing housing for disability people.
He cited section (6) 2 of the Persons with Disability Act, which states that the Commission shall consult with the government of Sierra Leone over the provision of a suitable and affordable housing for persons with disability.
The Program Manager continued that the Commission will work with the Ministries of Housing and Country Planning to provide physically challenged persons with suitable and affordable housing.
He disclosed that his Commission has collaborated with organizations and institutions to provide housing for physically challenged persons, citing the Freetown City Council.
Mondeh continued that the Mayor of the Freetown City Council, Yvonne Aki-Sawyer, in 2019, evicted persons with disability at the Cotton Tree area.
This FCC and the Commission, he stated, collaborated in providing rented houses, beddings and mattresses in Waterloo and the Western Area Rural District.
The Disability Commission Program Manager expressed his dissatisfaction that sadly enough, these PWDs had abandoned these houses and moved back to the city largely due to the absence of basic social services.
“Most of them sold their houses and headed back for the city center,” he disclosed.
He continued that in 2019, the Commission also supported forty (40) physically challenged persons with shelter.
“Every raining season, we supported the house of Jesus, Polio Persons Organization, Pademba Road, with plastic tarpaulins and physical cash to strengthen their houses,” Tamba Mondeh noted.
Responding to questions around accessibility to schooling for physically challenged children, he stressed that the Commission is a government agency that is charged with the responsibility of implementing government policies.
The Free, Quality Education, he recounted, is one of such policies that the Commission is supporting. He stated that the Commission has a mandate to ensure that children with disabilities are admitted and retained in schools.
Failure on the side of parents to meet such an obligation, according to him, constitutes an offence as provided for in Section 35 of the Persons with Disability Act.
He also indicated that failure by government and government assisted schools to admit children with disabilities also constitutes a violation under Section 15 of the Disability Act, Mondeh recounted.
Schools are also culpable, he continued, if they failed to provide an accessible environment including necessary structures for children to aid teaching and learning.
“As a Commission, we don’t provide learning materials but work with the Ministry of Education to ensure that learning materials presented in an acceptable format, such as brailing materials for the visually impaired and bold printing for children with short sightedness.” He further indicated that these provisions are embedded in the Disability Act and hence should be adhered to by school authorities.
The Commission, according to Mr. Mondeh, does not have comprehensive data of the number of children with special needs countrywide, but has data of special needs schools like the School for the Blind and the Dumb, etc.
He disclosed that the Commission is constantly lobbying with Government through the Ministry for subventions to these schools.
He said Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Right of Persons with Disability states that a national accredited institution should produce data on disability and not the Commission on disability.
“We have the 2015 National Housing and Population Census data but this, according to him, was condemned by the Commission on the grounds that it does not reflect a true picture of the number of persons with disability in Sierra Leone,” he disclosed.
He further disclosed that, in 2004, the findings of the Population Census had tagged the number of persons with disability a little over three to four hundred thousand representing 3.2 percent nationwide.
Ten years down the line, he continued, in 2015, just after the Ebola scourge due to reports of accidents and amputations, the number of disable persons in the country dropped in 2015 to three thousand.
The Washington Group Question has been identified as the best tool to determine movement sight and other disability impediments.
Sierra Leone was, in 2015, criticized for not using the Washington Group Question and, as a result, the pilot phase of the report indicated that 70% of Sierra Leoneans were disabled.
The Commission had discredited the report’s findings largely due to the above.
He also lauded his Commission for facilitating the admission of disable persons to tertiary institutions by writing letters of permit to registrars of all higher learning institutions to register persons with disability with a view for them to access free tertiary education as provided for in section 14 of the Person with Disability Act of 2010.
While speaking on retention, the Program Manager highlighted that it is mandatory, by law pursuant to section 16 (2), that all proprietors and head of public institutions should ensure that students with disabilities should not only learn in accessible classrooms but that special attention must be given to them during the conduct of lessons.
He sadly recounted that most of the public buildings and schools lack the appropriate infrastructure to accommodate Persons with Disability.
Tamba Mondeh continued that, last year, the Commission conducted an accessibility audit on State House, Parliament and the Law Court building with a view to ascertain how useable they are for persons with disability.
He indicated that the Commission has plans to roll out similar audit exercises to other public buildings in the country.
The Program Manager identified low and late disbursement of subventions to the Commission, mobility of officials of the Commission, high expectation of persons with disability, knowledge on the Disability Act, negative attitude of service providers and communities towards persons with disability, ability of persons with disability to challenge their rights are among the current challenges the Commission is grappling with.