By Politico Staff Writer
Budgetary constraints and lack of data are among many factors hindering provision of services for Persons With Disabilities (PWDs), the Director of Social Welfare has disclosed.
Francis Kabia said lack of comprehensive data on PWDs is limiting the government’s ability to respond to the needs of PWDs as it makes it difficult to plan.
“Low budgetary allocation is another major problem faced by PWDS and there is need for government to increase its allocation to persons with disabilities,” Mr Kabia is in a quoted in a news dispatch from the Strategic Communications Unit of the Ministry of Information and Communications.
Kabia was speaking on the context of the submission of Sierra Leone’s First Country Report on UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He said the document which was prepared by the Ministry of Social Welfare was submitted to the Secretariat of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities through the Permanent Mission of Sierra Leone in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Sierra Leone report, according to Mr Kabia, highlights both the progress and corresponding challenges in implementing the provisions of the United Nations Convention on PWDs.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13th December, 2006. It adopts a broad categorization of persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The convention clarifies and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities and identifies areas where adaptation have to be made for persons with disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced.
Signatory countries are expect to send in country reports to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which is an independent body of experts that monitors implementation of the Convention by the States Parties.
All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented. States must report initially within two years of accepting the Convention and thereafter every four years. The Committee examines each report and makes such suggestions and general recommendations on the report as it may consider appropriate and then forward these recommendations to the State Party concerned.
Sierra Leone signed up to the convention in 2010, yet this is the first time it is sending its report, according to the news dispatch from the Information Ministry.
Nonetheless, Mr Kabia said the decision to submit the first country report speaks volume of the government's unwavering commitment to ameliorating the lives of persons with disabilities.
According to him, addressing issues affecting persons with disabilities is at the center of the Sierra Leone Government's Mid-Term National Development Plan (2019-2023) and a pivotal activity in the Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Social Welfare.
Kabia also noted that the report will serve as a major document that explains in detail what the government had done in the area of providing Free Health Care, Free Quality Education, and a host of other services that PWDs are enjoying due to the commitment by the government to seek their welfare.
Kabia called on the Sierra Leone Union of Persons with Disabilities (SLUDI) to treat the report seriously, noting that it provides leverage for them to ask for more from government and also potentially enables them to speak from a position of strength.
The director also spoke on the need for popularisation of the document among Sierra Leoneans, especially PWDs, so that they are aware of what their government is doing for them and what it intends to do, as well as the challenges faced by government in addressing some of their demands.
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