Blind Awareness Month ends with ‘Chain for Change’
THE curtain came down Tuesday on activities to mark Blind Awareness Month locally, with a large gathering of sighted and unsighted persons forming a chain of people and canes around Public Buildings, in Brickdam, Georgetown.
It was an effort to raise awareness of disability rights, while calling on the Government to implement the provisions of the Persons with Disability Act 2010.
The demonstration, which saw scores of keenly enthusiastic participants converging under the theme ‘Chain For Change’, was organised by Guyana Society for the Blind, whose Chairman is Mr. Cecil Morris and the Blind Cricket Association’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Ramesh Singh, with support from Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO).
The Chain for Change called on the Ministries of Education, Labour and Human Services and Social Security to fulfill their responsibilities given them by the legislation so that people with disabilities (PWDs) are able to be independent.
Other organisations which participated in  Tuesday’s activity included the National Commission on Disability (NCD), other volunteers, ophthalmology and rehabilitation students and from special needs schools.
The Disability Movement is calling, specifically, for the fulfillment of rights under education, employment and independent living, through their own choices, said Ms. Sarah Jane Digby, VSO Disability Advocacy Adviser to the NCD.
Handbills distributed by the demonstrators set out the demands of the disability community, including for:
* children with disabilities to be in school and learning,
* PWDs to have equal access to skills training and job opportunities and
* Ministry of Human Services and Social Security to provide the mobility aids, counselling and financial support to PWDs and their families, as set out in the new legislation.
Promulgated last year, the PWD Act sets out the rights and freedoms of the 50,000 target group.
Morris remarked that PWDs do not want pity or charity.
“We want to be able to live independent lives, to have the freedom to make our own decisions and to be in a position to contribute to our country’s development. We’re meeting outside Parliament at the close of Blind Awareness Month to remind our lawmakers of their promises to us and call for the implementation of the legislation so that we can learn skills for work and have the opportunities to go for jobs, the same as anyone else, only then will we be truly independent,” he asserted.
Last March, President Bharrat Jagdeo, as well as the Ministers of Labour, Health and Housing and representatives of the Ministries of Education and Human Services and Social Security appeared at the start of the sensitisation programme to the PWD Act.