By Our Reporter
Mbarara-The Leaders of the persons with disabilities have asked the government to offer sign language interpreters that will assist deaf People to understand the program of Parish Development Model so that that they also benefit from the program.
Eunice Asiimwe, the national treasurer for persons with disabilities who doubles as the female Councilor representing PWDs in Mbarara city Council has raised the concern that there is something missing in this program in line with the persons with disabilities, that there is miscommunication among the deaf people. Speaking to our reporter, Asiimwe said that deaf people will not benefit from the PDM program if government does not offer them interpreters for easy communication.
She said that even if they organize village meetings about PDM they will not communicate to deaf people as long as there is no sign language interpreters whether they put these things on radios stations they not also get communication. That the most thing which this government must do is to put an interpreter whenever there is meetings about PDM. ” I believe Government has tried to do it’s best to think about Persons With Disabilities, I know as PWDs we have our 10% on the Ugx100m to be put on parishes specifically for PWDs but our deaf people will not benefit from this Money If government does not cater for them interpreters, how he/she will access this money when they don’t have information. For example they called us at Hotel Triangle for Parish Development Model launch for Mbarara City but we had deaf people who missed out the information because there was no any interpreter . Let the government help these categories of people” said Eunice. According to her, Mbarara has got about 40 Deaf people who are within the 39%, they are supposed benefit from this money of PDM.
Eunice has also urged government to do thorough assessment and investigate if there are genuine groups that are going to benefit from this program of PDM. She said that you may find there are fake groups that exist targeting this money to only eat them contrary to President Museven’s original aim for this money. She appealed to the government to first get data about persons with disabilities before release of the money. ” I believe government did not have our data as persons with disabilities, they are telling us that our share on the Ugx100m of PDM is only 10% but my question is where did they base, how many are we? What if this money can not serve the number of persons with disabilities because of big number! so our data is not clear let the government first do a correct data so that we can benefit basing on that data”, she added.
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