By Donstance Koroma
The Program Manager, National Commission for Person with Disability (NCPD), Tamba Mondeh, has called the Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) to borrow a leaf from the University of Makani by establishing a special needs department with Sign Language and other caring disability issues as modules.
According to Tamba Mondeh, individuals with hearing impairment are facing serious challenges with regards education. “There are not enough teachers to teach sign language in all of the schools across the country,” Tamba said.
He disclosed that, in 2019, the Commission started a pilot project by partnering with the Foundation for Literacy and Hearing Impaired (FLHI), which consists of sign language teachers to teach individuals the subject.
“We also intend to collaborate with the Ministry of Education, tertiary institutions and the Teaching Service Commission in ensuring that sign language is mainstreamed along the schooling system,” Tamba Mondeh added.
He recognizes that teaching sign language and other caring modules is a very huge issue that will take time before the Commission will attain its goal.
He intimated the Nightwatch that the Commission has the mandate to register organizations working for and on behalf of disability issues, noting that there are twelve (12) International Nongovernmental and national Nongovernmental Organizations working on disability issues with approximately two hundred and twelve Disable Person Organizations (DPOs) across the country.
Speaking on the Service Agreement Registration (SAR), the Program Manager stated that, before now, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs and the Freetown City Council were registering organizations. However, in 2019, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development introduced the Service Agreement Registration for international and nongovernmental organizations entering the country to enable the government monitor projects and implementations of those organizations across the country.
With regards the Commission’s activities, he continued, “we have two streams of programs – the Commission deliverables and plans to support two thousand persons with disability to access middle level manpower,” he said.
Mondeh noted that, in 2019, the Commission facilitates 12 surgeries for persons with disability with plans to intensify assistance to person with disability in health crisis, adding that the Commission provided over four hundred million leones to support programs and projects of disable person organizations across the country, citing vision for the blind, etc.
The Commission, in collaboration with the National Commission for Social Action, through the social safety net, intends to support two thousand households of which 25% of those households will consist of persons with disability.