Persons with disabilities urged to aggressively demand for their rights

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) in the country have been urged to be “aggressive” in demanding their rights.

The advocacy committee chairman of the Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations, Mr. Alexander Bankole Williams is of the view that, until persons with disabilities began to take people who violate their rights to court to get them punished, duty bearers would continue to take them for granted.

According to him, across the world, the issue of persons with disabilities accessing their rights has always been a fight, and so PWDs in Ghana should not expect to achieve it on a silver platter.

Mr. Bankole Williams was speaking to Journalists on the sidelines of a forum on Thursday, June 23, 2022, in Accra to commemorate the 16th anniversary of the passage of the Disability Act 2006, Act 715.

He observes that, for the past 16 years since the law was passed, the disability community has always been given excuses why certain rights are not granted, and very often, such excuses are baseless.

He believes that persons with disabilities are not pushing hard enough to cause the kind of change they want to see in their lives.

“It is not true that the law we have (Act 715) is not strong enough to give persons with disabilities the rights that they need to have. It is simply because we have not pushed hard enough. If we had pushed hard enough, duty bearers would have done what they ought to do. And so the time has come for us to change the approach to seeking our rights. The time has come for us to now go to court to have the court compel duty bearers to implement the rights that the law has given us”, he states.

The advocate committee chairman emphasizes “We have to demand and demand strongly. These rights, we own them, we need to protect them. If we don’t, we will continue to be objects of pity. You get what you demand; you don’t get what you desire”.

Contributing to discussions at the forum, a board member of the National Council on Persons with Disability, Madam Emma Bruce-Lye shared the same view, urging PWDs at the local level to demand their rights from their District Assemblies, as well as the local folks.

She urged them to be proactive and fearless in fighting for their rights, and not to always wait for action from the national level.

“For instance, if you see someone putting up a public building that is not disability-friendly, you should be able to go and tell the person to do the right thing, and educate them”, she explains.

She added that they must first know their rights before they could demand them.

She further cautioned them against falling for what she called false sympathy from the public; a situation where people pretend to be so nice to them due to their disabilities