Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is prepar­ing to roll out a suite of ini­tia­tives to wel­come dis­abled em­ploy­ees in­to all di­vi­sions.

The de­vel­op­ment comes fol­low­ing a man­date by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine in May that each di­vi­sion must hire at least one dis­abled em­ploy­ee.

At an on­board­ing work­shop at the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and So­cial Pro­tec­tion in Scar­bor­ough, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Ack­el Franklyn said the THA in­tends to en­sure each dis­abled em­ploy­ee is giv­en the nec­es­sary tools to func­tion and thrive in their var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties.

He said the in­ten­tion is not to pro­vide to­ken op­por­tu­ni­ties to the com­mu­ni­ty, but to right a long­stand­ing so­cial wrong and give the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“To­day we move from a sen­si­ti­sa­tion ex­er­cise. To­day is a re­flec­tion of our shared com­mit­ment to build­ing work­places where every in­di­vid­ual is re­spect­ed, val­ued and giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly,” Franklyn said.

He said his di­vi­sion will leave no per­son be­hind as it eras­es bar­ri­ers to em­ploy­ment and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

Franklyn said Au­gus­tine’s di­rec­tive left THA staff fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to come up with a plan to in­cor­po­rate the dis­abled in­to the work­force.

“To them, there were more tech­ni­cal as­pects to what in­clu­sion should look like. It should not mean dump­ing peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties who could be hu­mil­i­at­ed if not prop­er­ly in­te­grat­ed.”

Mean­while, Ise­le Robin­son-Coop­er, head, In­clu­sive Growth & So­cial Pol­i­cy, Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, said the THA’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty stands to ben­e­fit by in­clud­ing the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty.

“Six­teen per cent of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion have dis­abil­i­ties. That is over 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple. If these peo­ple are ex­clud­ed from the work­place or the wider so­ci­ety, think about how much po­ten­tial we are los­ing,” she said.

She said it is cru­cial for gov­ern­ments to im­ple­ment poli­cies to help peo­ple who can­not achieve their po­ten­tial.

Robin­son-Coop­er urged con­tin­u­ous dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to ad­vance the cause of the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty.

“Un­til we all have ac­cess, none of us re­al­ly have ac­cess. It could be you, it could be me. Some peo­ple are born with dis­abil­i­ties and some peo­ple be­come dis­abled.

“If you think it doesn’t im­pact you be­cause you are with­out a dis­abil­i­ty.... What the old peo­ple say? One day, one day.”

Dr Onyekachuku Ok­pala, di­vi­sion ad­min­is­tra­tor, urged the bank­ing sec­tor, pri­vate en­ter­pris­es and oth­er stake­hold­ers to al­so get on board to cre­ate a more in­clu­sive so­ci­ety.

“More of­ten than not the great­est bar­ri­ers faced by per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties are not phys­i­cal; they are bar­ri­ers of per­cep­tion, op­por­tu­ni­ty. We each have the pow­er to trans­form our work­places in­to spaces where abil­i­ty is recog­nised be­fore dis­abil­i­ty is no­ticed.”