BASSETERRE, St Kitts - DIFFERENTLY able persons living in the Federation continue to face daily challenges as they are discriminated against and find it difficult to traverse around the country and also in and out of public and private buildings.
In an exclusive interview with this publication, President of the Disability Association Anthony Mills revealed that based on the feedback and his own experiences, “disabled persons are seen as those people who cannot contribute to society”.
“They don’t see us like they would have seen the average person. That is…they look at you differently. Most people look at you and see you as not being capable, even though we try to show them that inability is not a disability. But they automatically see you as not being capable,” he added.
Stressing that discrimination of the differently able “is a cultural thing that is ingrained” within one’s thinking, he opined that it boils down to educating and sensitising the public about disability and the effects it has on the population.
Mills said that his association has been working on programmes of such nature.
“We do a lot of awareness campaigns and we go to the schools, we visit them in the month of May as we try to educate the children, because that is kinda where it starts. We try to let the children understand that a child with a disability is no different from them and they would want the same things as them. We can also try to meet with the Parent teachers Association.”
He however noted that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has also assisted in public awareness for disability through various outreach programmes.
“Right now, as part of the UNESCO project that they have running, they are to do two PSAs (Public Service Announcements) that would be on the radio and on the TV. And that will also help too.”
One of the biggest problems outlined by the President is movement around the town and also the free movement in and out of buildings; something he noted that has been a burden for wheelchair bound disabled persons for sometime now.
To this end, he revealed that his association is working to have the building codes revised, since that is where the problem lies.
Most of the building codes do not cater for ramps for wheel-chaired persons to roll up, he added.
He stated that the blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of those in authority, since they are the ones who should have policies in place to support disabled persons.
“A lot is left to be desired when it comes to that. I think what is going to change that is when we are going to get the building codes changed. And that is something we are working on. When someone is putting up a new building they must make it accessible.
“It’s going to take changes in continual education, it’s going to take changes in policies to get us there, it going to take changes to the building codes and we will have to sign onto the human rights documents like the UN Convention for people with disabilities.”
Mills expounded on the fact that persons not only need to have easy access to buildings but also to information. To this end, he said there are people with various disabilities and this should be looked at in a more holistic manner.
“This is a Caribbean wide thing, where the culture has been way back and they see the people with disability as a joke. I know as a kid they would laugh at people with disability, they treat you like a literal outcast. The association is 31 years and we have been fighting for change for all of those years,” Mills explained.
He noted that times have changed and people have somewhat been receptive to the disabled, but more needs to be done.
Meanwhile, Earle Clarke, Chairman of the Association’s Fund Raising Committee, noted that “disability is not the end of the road for anyone and persons should take it seriously”.
Clarke recounted that he was a budding coach who got into an accident and soon after lost his leg. But that did not stop him from “being an active person”.
The association currently trains people in various fields of study and receives monetary and donations in kind from a number of NGOs as well as from public sector entities and overseas donors.
