Persons with disabilities call for adequate inclusive services

By Elias Hakizimana

As the world celebrates the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) 2020, Rwanda embarks on some achievements in promoting inclusiveness in most of services but, persons with disabilities expose existing challenges that still hinder their development and wellbeing.

The IDPD 2020 is celebrated in Rwanda under the theme: “Lets promote Health Services and Fight Against pandemics for Persons with Disabilities”.

Sauda Mukamazimpaka has hearing and speaking impairments, assisted by her interpreter, she said that persons with same disabilities have challenges to access and share information in different places where they can seek daily services needed by human beings.

“For example, how can I talk to or hear from the nurse, doctor or a medical practitioner when seeking for medical treatment? We used to be on the sitting queue and they keep calling names but we can’t hear and it ends up staying alone there. Communication is still a challenge for us.” She said.

Mukamazimpaka said that pregnant women and girls who are in the menstrual periods still lack access to medical services.

She noted that communication issue became worse during Covid-19 as they can’t interpret the sign language of mouth because people wear face masks.

Mukamazimpaka said that only people in the town who managed to get facilities in learning sign language given by the National Council for persons with Disabilities (NCPD) in partnership with Rwanda National Union of Deaf (RNUD), others from remote rural areas are still vulnerable.

“The Government of Rwanda needs to increase efforts in teaching sign language to all children from primary schools to enable them have the skills to help deaf people, persons with hearing and speaking impairments everywhere they meet them.” She noted.

The issue of lack of interpreters for persons like Mukamazimpaka has been reiterated by Jean de Dieu Ntarindwa who has physical disability.

He said that there are laws and regulations in place to promote the rights of persons with disabilities but are not yet fully implemented.

Inaccessible infrastructures

“Like we, people with physical disabilities, we still lack access to services in some public buildings. An example is the Kigali Public Library that does not have accessibility for PWDs. No person with physical disability can manage to reach there to read books.” Ntarindwa noted.

Among other issues of concerns PWDs raised include lack of financial capacity to afford prosthetic limbs as they are still expensive.

Officials said that they will do the best to remove existing barriers to PWDs to access to different services.

The representative of the ministry of health to the event celebration said that they are conducting advocacy in partnership with other entities to make sure that People with physical disabilities get insurance on prosthetic limbs. Every district will also have an orthopedic technician to cater for persons with physical disabilities.

Speaking on the gap of sign language knowledge among Rwandans, the Minister of State in Charge of Social Affairs and Social Protection in the Ministry of Local Government, Ignatienne Nyirarukundo said that the government is going to have a book of sign language by the end of 2020.

However, she said that there is no plan to teach sign language in schools but they will try to help Rwandans to know it.

She also said that the government will facilitate every Rwandan child who has disability to study near their homes.

“We have 446,453 persons with disabilities and we are going to try the best to ensure that every one of them has basic facilities depending to their type of disability by 2024.” Nyirarukundo said.

Romalis Niyomugabo, the President of the National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD), said that PWDs are happy for the progress made 10 years ago for the improvement of services for PWDs in Education, Health and Employment as many constraints were solved.

“After the government removed barriers to education for children with disabilities, we are now ready for the labour market and we are lucky that PWDs are prioritized to get employed when they compete and have same results with the people who have not disability. PWDs are now represented in the parliament, these are significant achievements we are celebrating today.” He said.

“We also thank the government to remove barriers in terms of accessible infrastructure like accessible roads for all. However, we still lack capacity to buy prosthetic limbs and we can’t access surgical services at 100 percent. We do request institutions to have interpreters of sign language to persons with hearing and speaking impairments. We do request special staff at health centers and hospitals to help these persons because they still have chance to die or lack medical treatment.” Niyomugabo added.

The international day of persons with disabilities is an annual event that is celebrated on December 3.

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