…persons with disabilities seek easy access to public transport
…urge speedy implementation of disability act

By Naomi Marshall
IN Guyana, a large proportion of our urban and rural transport systems remain inaccessible to persons with disabilities – a constraint that is a serious impediment to disability-inclusive development, but two mothers are determined that their children will not be left behind and have been making the personal sacrifice in ensuring that they get an education.
They are however, calling on the authorities to give effect to Persons with Disabilities Act 2010 and fully adopt the draft Special Education Needs Policy that can help eliminate some of the struggles of differently-abled persons.

For 18-year-old Rajni Persaud, a first year student of the University of Guyana pursuing a Diploma in Accountancy, easy access to transportation and even public buildings is key, having been diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was six months old.

According to Michigan Cerebral Palsy Attorneys, Cerebral palsy is “a group of non-progressive motor conditions often caused by brain damage.” These disorders are characterised by a loss or impairment of body movement, reflexes, balance, muscle control, muscle coordination, muscle tone, and posture. There are four types of Cerebral Palsy – Spastic, Ataxic, Dyskinetic and Mixed Cerebral Palsy.

In Rajni’s case, she has spastic triplegia cerebral palsy which causes stiffness in the muscles of the lower parts of her body, particularly her legs, in addition to her left arm. As such, she depends heavily on a wheel chair to move around.

A big issue
Her mother, Usha Persaud told the Guyana Chronicle that transportation is “a big issue” adding, that she had decided not to send her daughter to secondary school due to the high cost of transportation. The family resides at Coldingen on the East Coast of Demerara. “When she wrote Common Entrance I didn’t decide to send her to school back…I used to walk from here (Coldingen) pushing her in a wheel chair from here to meet Enterprise Primary School, everyday…When the rain falls then we take a taxi,” Usha related.

However, with motivation from others Usha said she allowed her daughter to attend secondary school, even though this came at a cost of $5000 per week for a taxi to take Rajni to school. But it paid off as Rajni graduated from President’s College in 2017 with eight Grade Ones and three Grade Twos. Determined to give her daughter a fair chance of attending university- Usha and her husband Khanai agreed to foot the hefty taxi bill. “It’s really expensive, to be honest for a week its $18,000 I pay now for UG. When she used to go President’s College I used to pay $5000 a week, every week,” said the mother, who has given up working to facilitate the movement of her daughter.

In an effort to facilitate persons with disabilities particularly those in wheel chair, Usha recommends that each Local Authority Area (LAA) be equipped with a special bus to accommodate this population, noting that there are many more persons who would like to be engaged in society but feel that their needs are not accommodated.

State transport

Ganesh Singh, a commissioner on the National Commission for Disability, expressed similar views, recommending that “the government reinstate some form of transportation system that is operated by the state,” which can accommodate persons with disabilities. “It’s one of the hindrances why you have a lot of wheelchair users not being more visible because it is costly for them to come out their homes,” Singh who is visually-impaired stated.

Sign language
While Rajni has spastic triplegia cerebral palsy and cannot walk, 13-year-old Trinity Payne was diagnosed with Spastic quadriplegia–a disorder that affects all four limbs, however, therapy has enabled her to walk. She on the other hand, does not speak. With the help of her mother, Lorette Payne who is a teacher, Trinity has remained the top performer of her class at Harmony Secondary in Linden.

Lorette has been the main source of communication between Trinity and the school system, using her limited knowledge of sign language to teach her daughter. However, Lorette does not consider her daughter the problem but thinks that the problem lies within the education system and its failure to effectively accommodate children with disabilities.
“Getting persons to sign for Trinity presently is a great concern for me because I’m attending university now and majority of the time I am not there. And this is one of the reasons that I delayed going to the university because I’m thinking nobody is there, no interpreter for her at school. They claim that they want to include but they ain’t really including,” Lorette told Guyana Chronicle.

Lorette posited that a sign language interpreter can be placed in the school to teach her daughter how to better communicate since her signing skills are limited. In fact, she believes that schools in Guyana should be equipped with specially-trained teachers to meet the needs of persons with disabilities.

Disability Act
With a population of about 50,000 persons living with disabilities, Guyana has made progress in meeting their needs particularly in the area of health but with the slothful implementation of the Persons with Disabilities Act 2010 is a cause for much concern.

Singh, an advocate said November, 2018 will mark eight years since the Persons with Disabilities Act was signed into law to safeguard their rights to employment, health access, independent life, recreation and politics but these rights’ are still infringed upon. “The majority of persons with disabilities continue to live in poverty as a result of a lack of education, lack of employment and inaccessibility to the wider society,” Singh told the Guyana Chronicle. In making his case, Singh used infrastructure as an example, noting that while some buildings may have ramps or lifts, there are still many public buildings in Guyana that are not accessible for persons with disabilities.

“Holistically, Guyana’s infrastructure doesn’t accommodate people with disability. Our sidewalks, our buildings that are of public use are inaccessible. Although the disability act stipulates that they should be accessible they are not, very few have ramps, lifts, doorways,” he lamented.

Singh also used transportation as a case in point, noting that there are persons in wheelchairs who are robbed of their rights to freely access public transportation. “Our public transportation system is privately operated and I would say unregulated although we claim to have certain regulations in place. You have minibus operators, taxi drivers, who are reluctant to carry persons with disabilities in their vehicles,” Singh pointed out.
Section 5, Sub-Section 8 (Accessibility) of the Persons with Disabilities Act sets the foundation for the Commission to collaborate with the minister responsible for transportation to formulate a public transportation policy aimed at addressing many of the issues that exist today.

Draft special need policy

In Guyana, the National Commission on Disability (NCD) was birthed out of the Persons with Disabilities Act 2010. As the national focal point on disability in the country, the NCD’s primary function is to provide and protect the rights of people with disabilities. In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, the NCD Executive Secretary Beverley Pile, while acknowledging that the education system is lacking with respect to effectively meeting the needs of persons with disabilities, noted that there is a draft Special Education Needs Policy that is being used by the Education Ministry though not adopted.

“The draft policy outlines exactly how special education should be conducted in this country – the teacher per children ratio, particularly in the classrooms,” Pile said.

In addition, she said that the draft policy outlines the various areas of expertise needed. “Teachers should be specialised in various areas of disability, like you must be specially trained to teach the deaf, you must be specially trained to teach the blind, you must be specially trained to teach those with intellectual disabilities. These are some of the things that you have within the policy, not a teacher who comes from CPCE with a little bit of what special education is,” Pile explained.

Last December, the Regional Centre for Stimulating the Development of Children and Young People with Special Educational Needs Associated with Disabilities, was commissioned with the aim of training persons to manage individuals with disabilities. When it becomes operational, training will include evaluation and diagnosis, language and occupational therapy, psychological treatment, prevention, rehabilitation and social integration services with a psycho pedagogical and socially inclusive approach.

In June, 2018, the Education Ministry, through the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), also launched the “Inclusion Professional Development Course” in Region Three aimed at equipping teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to make their schools and classrooms more inclusive for special needs students.

Although some efforts are being made to train teachers, Pile noted that a more in-depth approach is needed. “We need to reach to that part where this is a teacher that deals with the deaf, this is a person who is specialised, that’s the kind of thing the policy speaks to. Once that gets on stream, we are heading for better education all round in a more structured and qualitative manner,” she said.

According to Pile, lack of sufficient finance to carry out the NCD’s mandate is the biggest stumbling block. “The biggest challenge is finance. I tell people that disability issues about 10, 15 years ago it was under the carpet, now it’s above the carpet, it’s not on the table yet, it’s above the carpet which tells me of the issues that we have,” she said.