It’s been a year since the government of Zambia passed the Persons with Disabilities Act 2012 (PDB), and advocates for the severely disabled say the key issue of economic independence remains unaddressed.
“The act has made far reaching resolutions about the employment of person with disabilities,” says Elijah Ngwale, executive director of the Zambia Disability HIV/AIDS Human Rights Program in Lusaka. “But the act has not yet been implemented. The national employment strategy has not been implemented. So persons with disabilities are employed haphazardly and in an unpredictable manner.”
Ngwale, who is blind, says he left the country’s civil service after a dispute with his superiors in 1996. Since then, he and his wife, who is also blind, have been living off the incomes of their children and odd jobs commissioned by NGOs. He joins an estimated 15 per cent of Zambia’s population who are disabled and face significant challenges in finding jobs in the formal sector.
“The policies are only on paper,” says Mukuma Chikwata, president of Zambia National Association of the Deaf (ZNAD), who speaks in sign language through an interpreter. “It’s only lip service.”
Last year’s PDB was a legal upgrade to a piece of legislation from 1996. The act, promised by the Patriotic Front in the run up to the 2011 elections, was intended to enhance compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, which Zambia signed and ratified in 2010. The act continues the Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ZAPD) and the National Trust Fund for Persons with Disabilities (NTFPD). It also promises to infuse national policies and strategies with disability angles.
But despite decades of legislation and bureaucracy, most disabled people are still shunted into the country’s informal sector, where they earn piffling wages for endless work. According to Chikwata, deaf people in the informal sector might earn KW50 a month, far below any tiers of the country’s minimum wage system. The rural deaf may work as fishmongers or shepherds, while those in urban environments hock vegetables, work as independent carpenters, or clean houses. Most of their income goes to daily transportation and food, and their families provide the rest.
The NTFPD is supposed to act as a sort of development bank, loaning money to disabled people for small business strategies. But ZAPD Director Felix Silwimba came out in The Daily Mail this month expressing disappointment over the amount and value of loans the fund has been dispersing.
“They give us loans of KW500,” adds Ngwale, “and this is very little. If you give the loan to someone who is blind, what is going to happen is they will use it for their foodstuffs. It’s very meagre indeed.”
While Ngwale and some members of the ZAPD have the benefit of university educations, many others do not. Government-sponsored training and education programs are sparse, and its families who often decide whether or not a disabled child will get the education needed to enter the formal sector. While government officials like Vice President Guy Scott do publicly encourage business to hire qualified people with disabilities, the fact remains that many disabled people are blocked from attaining basic qualifications early in life.
“The parents stigmatize the deaf,” says ZNAD Executive Director James Kapembwa, who also speaks through an interpreter. “They say spending money on a deaf child? They say what is the benefit of that? They don’t support the deaf child in school. They support the able-bodied.”
One clear avenue of employment for all disabled people, says former ZNAD executive director Samson Mwale, is the disability bureaucracy itself. Under the auspices of the PDB, government has appointed focal point people throughout the country. But, says Mwale, they are all able-bodied.
“They do not know about our welfare or what we need,” he adds. “Now that we propose to government that we should be the focal point people, the situation has become difficult.”
Paul Carlucci is a Lusaka-based freelance journalist. He contributes often to Think Africa Press and is the author of The Secret Life of Fission, out this fall through Canada’s Oberon Press. Follow him on twitter @paulcarlucci
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