By Regina Benneh, GNA
Sunyani, June 25, GNA - Ghanaians have been implored to respect and promote the rights of People with Disabilities (PWDs), particularly girls and desist from discriminating against them.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Setina Aboagye, the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regional Coordinator of Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service made the appeal at Nkoranza in the Bono East Region.
Speaking at a two-day right-based literacy training workshop for 43 vulnerable teenage girls, DSP Aboagye observed the public mostly abused the rights of PWDs through exploitation.
She said many a time some close relatives of some PWDs compelled the latter to go and beg for alms on the streets and described the situation as regrettable and unacceptable because it posed great danger to their health and safety.
DSP Aboagye pointed out that regardless of their conditions, PWDs also possessed equal rights as other able-bodied persons and therefore needed to be accepted and integrated into the society with equal opportunities.
Attended by school drop-out girl-children and girls with disabilities from the Nkoranza North District and the Nkoranza South Municipality, the workshop was organized by the DOVVSU in collaboration with the Bono East Regional Coordinating Council and sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).
It was to equip the participants with in-depth knowledge of their rights, freedom and responsibilities and also to empower them, based on their diverse backgrounds to promote social interactions among themselves and contemporaries in their respective communities.
Among the topics treated were human rights mechanisms and protection, gender, leadership and sexuality.
DSP Aboagye emphasised that using PWDs, especially children to beg for money was against the rights of such children because it was demeaning and devalued their dignity as human beings.
She therefore advocated for an immediate end to any unfavorable treatment being meted out to PWDs for them to be incorporated into the society.
DSP Aboagye again entreated parents of children with disabilities to refrain from keeping them indoors but must give them equal educational opportunities so that they would overcome their challenges to become assets but not liabilities on their families and the larger society.
She encouraged PWDs also emancipate themselves from mental slavery, stressing that they must not limit themselves as nonentities because “disability does not mean inability”.
But DSP Aboagye noted that, that could be possible if they were offered the necessary and maximum support in diverse ways by their families and the society for them to become responsible citizens capable of contributing meaningfully to national development.
GNA
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