By DisabilityNewGH
The disability community in Ghana is appealing to President Nana Akuffo-Addo to, as a matter of urgency, re-assign Hon. Adwoa Safo, the absentee Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, under whose ministry they fall, and give them a substantive minister.
Hon. Adwoa Safo has abandoned her post for more than a year now and is currently in the United Sates.
The President has since assigned the Sanitation Minister, Hon. Cecilia Abena Dapaah as a care-taker minister.
The absence of a substantive minister is having a serious negative impact on persons with disabilities in the country.
The chairman of the advocacy committee of the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations, Mr Alexander Bankole Williams, described the situation as a great disservice to persons with disabilities in the country.
He opined that, the absence of a substantive minister showed unwillingness of the President to give the rights of persons with disabilities the required significant push.
“What has happened is a great disservice, particularly to persons with disabilities. And for me, it shows how unwilling the President of the country is to really give the rights of persons with disabilities the significant push required, beyond his demonstrable act of tokenism”.
“Persons with disabilities are being heavily negatively impacted because of the absence of a substantive sector minister”, he stated.
Mr Alexander Williams added that, “The care-taker minister is a minister who is already heavily loaded with the weightier issues in her sector. If the minister, for any good reason cannot be at post, the President should look at re-assigning that sector minister to elsewhere and give us a substantive minister”.
From 2019 to 2020, the disability movement and the Ministry for Gender, Children and Social Protection, through the National Council on Persons with Disability, worked on an amendment bill which reviewed the Disability Act 2006, Act 715, to conform to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The bill and its accompanying draft legislations have not yet gone to cabinet for approval and onward presentation to Parliament.
Mr Bankole Williams attributed the delay to the absence of a substantive sector minister.
He was speaking in an interview with DisabilityNewsGH on the sidelines of the 2022 National Disability Day celebration in Accra on June 23, a forum organized by Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations with sponsorship from Ghana Somubi Dwumadie.
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SOURCE: DisabilityNewsGH.com