SOCIAL PROTECTION FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES IN THE NADOWLI-KALEO DISTRICT

Abstract

Social Protection provisioning for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in Ghana is highly inadequate. Despite the passage of the Persons with Disability Act of 2006 (Act 715) to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [UNCRPD], PWDs in Ghana still face substantial barriers of entry into the workplace and for social and political participation. PWDs lack material supports; including health care, education and training, credit facilities and transportation, and do not receive reasonable accommodation that best supports their functioning. In addition, individuals with impairments have difficulty qualifying as PWDs to entitle them to disability social protection schemes financed by the central Government. Qualitative research design was therefore used for the research and the instruments employed to gather the data were focus group discussion and interview. Thirty PWDs. comprising ten each of the blind, the deaf and dumb and persons with physical disabilities were purposively sampled for the focus group discussion; whiles twenty stakeholders in disability issues were also purposively sampled for the interview. This study therefore examines the challenges PWDs face under the social, political, economic and cultural contexts and on the other hand, the effectiveness of existing social protection schemes for PWDs in the Nadowli-Kaleo District. It highlights the fact that PWDs in the district are faced with enormous challenges. It argues that Ghana is signatory to the UNCRPD and has subsequently ratified it by passing the Persons with Disability Act. Yet PWDs continue to experience extreme poverty, neglect, gross human rights violation; and social, economic and political discriminations. To ensure that the conditions of PWDs are improved, it is recommended that the institutions that provide social protection services to PWDs are resourced both financially and materially to enable them administer social protection services to PWDs with less difficulty.