Action Aid Ghana Supports Wa School for the Deaf

Action Aid Ghana Support Wa School for the Deaf

Action Aid Ghana has presented 100 mattresses and 100 plastic buckets to reduce the challenges of the inmates of the Wa School for the Deaf. The donation is part of Action Aid's commitment to ensuring that all people have a right to life in dignity.

Mr. George Dery, Programme Manager of Action Aid, said the Upper West Region could boast of two eminent personalities who passed through the Wa and Akropong schools for the blind, in the persons of Dr. Daanah Seidu, Minister for Chieftaincy, and Dr. Kurie, a Director at the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Action Aid Programme Manager drew the attention of governments to the fact that it was not just enough to provide a certain percentage of the Common Fund for the people with disability, but rather put up infrastructure that would be accessible and affordable to motivate parents to send their challenged children to school.

Mr. Dery said the School for the Deaf has admitted 265 mentally challenged children, and said that there were many more children with disability who are hidden in their communities because of social stigma and discrimination.

He further stated that discrimination against children with disability was a common phenomenon in many communities, and that poverty had contributed to many children born with disability being denied access to formal education as a right.

The Programme Manager was alarmed because most of them end up as beggars, social misfits and become a burden to society, and appealed to the government to move away from mere rhetoric to action by ensuring children with disability have the right to education, health care, social protection and gainful employment

Mr. Dery referred to the recent news of the poisoning of such children, referred to as spirit children, in the Kasena-Nankana District in the Upper East Region.

The Headmistress of Wa School for the Deaf, Madam Comfort Nabugu, was grateful to organisations and institutions which had been helpful to the school anytime they were approached, and stated that when the school faced an acute water shortage as a result of the breakdown of boreholes, the Municipal Assembly and Plan Ghana helped solve the problem, and appealed to the district assemblies to support the school.

Madam Nabugu also appealed to the government to help construct the abandoned administrative block, renovate the Junior High School block, and the extension of electricity, to enable the school admit more pupils.

The Headmistress also appealed to the government to reconsider its policy to install prepaid metres in special schools, as pupils in those schools do not pay fees, and that the government's feeding grant to special schools cannot sustain the policy.