Spare a thought to people with disabilities in rural areas
Has anyone ever stopped to - no not imagine that would not do justice to the situation
on the ground – to see for themselves the conditions people with disabilities have to
endure everyday of their lives in the outlying and rural areas of Zimbabwe?
People with disabilities in rural areas are largely a forgotten lot. The majority of them
do not have the basic means to have access to health and educational services let
alone gainful employment to survive. These basic necessities are wheel chairs,
spectacles, walking aids to name a few of assistive devices.
Rural life is in general is tough. One has to have the ability and strengths to survive.
But it so happens that the majority of people with disabilities live in rural areas.
It is commonly known that more than 75 percent of Zimbabweans are located in the
rural areas. What may not be well known is that over time societal prejudice has
forced parents of children with disabilities to dump their offspring in the rural areas.
The reasons being that their male breadwinner spouses would have deserted them
after the children were born. Some and these do not constitute a negligent number,
female parents are not comfortable living with these children them in their urban
homes and so find it convenient to hide them in their former rural dwellings.
Given the harsh environment prevailing on the ground should society and all who
should be concerned shrug their collective shoulders and leave the problem to fate?
Providing the necessary assistance to people with disabilities is very difficult because
they are not found in one location. In some instances there is only one person with a
disability in a 100-kilometre radius. Very few non-governmental disability
organisations have the capacity to reach such people.
Moreover some forms of disabilities including those recently classified as disabling
conditions attract very little funding. Therefore the meagre funds made available are
inadequate to reach these remotely located people no matter how desperate and
deserving their cases may be.
Organisations of people with disabilities have been roundly criticised for
concentrating their efforts on urban-based people with disabilities. It cannot be out
rightly denied that there are some of these organisations that unscrupulously use the
rural populace to attract donors at the expense of the rural located people with
disabilities. When these funds are made available, a few reachable representative
number of persons in the easily accessible hinterland (where they are fairly reasonable
guest or hotel accommodation facilities) are assisted.
The Government has rural development structures and personnel that are
representative of national Ministry organs. For example there are extension officers
that cover agriculture, health and economic development fields in almost every village
and ward. These extension workers should be retrained so that they are equipped with
skills on how to fulfil the needs of people with disabilities in addition to their present
responsibilities.
Counselling and capacity building skills are needed to restore the confidence of
people with disabilities. They need to be made to believe in themselves and their
potential ability to live independently. They need to appreciate that like everyone else
in their areas, they are capable of contributing towards the development of their
homes and community projects.
People with disabilities are not ‘forced’ to do manual labour like partaking in the
government food for work programmes or community initiated programmes like
constructing additional blocks of classrooms for school children.
However they are ‘forced’ in a sense that those unable to manually participate and
required in some instances to financially contribute. This is regrettable in the extreme.
People with disabilities are indirectly expected to pay for their condition, as they are
somehow responsible for the state they find themselves in.
In other cases the discrimination takes the form of isolation. People with disabilities
are deliberately but covertly left out in community development committees. It is
usually assumed that since they are unable to physically do the work themselves then
they have nothing to offer in terms of ideas in these committees.
This discrimination is further reinforced by the prejudicial impression stemming from
the reality that a majority of people with disabilities live in rural areas because their
close relatives dumped them, as they were considered unsightly, useless and a social
liability.
And if people with disabilities are viewed as a liability in a relatively hospitable
environment like the urban areas what more would be the communal expectations of
such people in a rural setting?
The following are some of the ways the concerns and aspirations of people with
disabilities can be heard and practical solutions found or compromises achieved:
Efforts should be made to have rudimentary inexpensive mobility assisting devises
designed for the rural terrain to be manufactured in government funded vocational
colleges and distributed as per need. Perhaps institutions of higher learning can
involve themselves in the research and designing of these products.
Issues that have to do with disabilities would have more relevance and therefore
impact if district councils should include in their committees representative members
of people with disabilities. One can go further and advocate for the inclusion of a
similar representative person in the newly created national umbrella body of councils.
District Council by-laws should have provisions that make it a requirement that at
least one of District councillors must be a person with a disability. These legal
measures will send the right signals to all formal structures from District level down
through the Ward Development Committees (Wardcos) to the Village Development
Committees {Vidcos) that disability issues have to be included at every level of
policy making bodies. In fact it is at grass roots level that these changes of policy can
be felt and can positively transform the lives of people with disabilities and of cause
benefit their own families and the community per se.
People with disabilities perhaps need more assistance in removing all barriers that
inhibit them from enjoying life as is expected of a society with social justice
principles. Their rights are severely sanctioned by first the physical environment and
secondly by societal actions and inaction rooted primarily on prejudice. Prejudice can
effectively be reduced if not eliminated by non-discriminatory policies put into effect
in all areas of human activity.
-----Richard Nyathi is an activist on disability issues. For comments and contributions,
please e-mail: mdlulizw@yahoo.com
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