By Bill W. Cooper
The Executive Director of the National Commission on Disabilities (NCD), Samuel S. Dean has reminded House Speaker, Fonati Koffa, of the US$1.5 million budgetary increment that was discussed prior to the recalling of the Legislature for an extra sitting.
Dean also emphasized the importance of the budgetary increment in order to adequately address the issues confronting persons living with disabilities in Montserrado and other parts of Liberia.
He further highlighted the various programs and initiatives that the NCD has planned to implement with the additional funding, including adequate services and accessibility improvements among others for people living with disabilities.
In his note the Speaker Koffa on his official Facebook page, Dean said, “As you return to this 3 weeks special session to speak on improving the welfare of your citizens, this letter is a kind reminder about our recent discussion.”
“Mr. Speaker, please do not forget to highlight the increment of the budget of the National Commission on Disabilities (NCD) from US$280,000 to at least US$1.5 million, according to our conversation the other day,” he pointed out.
The NDC boss said that way, they will start to efficiently get persons with disabilities and their children off the streets and execute a sustainable empowerment program for them that they will never return.
According to him, most parents of street children are persons with disabilities, and revealed, “We have their statistics, and our social workers are ready to go. The only thing lacking is funding.”
He noted, “Will that increment, we will also build an accessible estate for them. Once you get them off the streets, they will need shelters for them and their families, and we also intend to industrialize disability.”
“We will change the NCD to an SOE instead of a spending entity. We plan to tap into the US$3.5 billion Assistive Technology (AT) market and fabricate mobility aids among others, to target the 1.5 billion persons with disabilities worldwide,” he expressed.
“We will further employ our over 300 volunteer’s country-wide in the spirit of decentralization of the NCD because the NCD has an office only in Montserrado, with no pay or logistics for their coordinators country-wide,” he intoned.
Dean further indicated that an increment to the NDC budget will put their coordinators on salary which will encourage them to coordinate and facilitate projects like ongoing enumeration/disaggregated data collection throughout the country.
He added, “To that end, we grieve in prayers that you, as a human person and an exemplified leader of our dispensation, will be gracious and merciful in providing a safety net for our compatriots who have slipped through the cracks.”
Dean at the same time thanked the Speaker in advance for what he described as the initial step, thus expressing his optimism about improved disability-responsive budgeting in the next fiscal year to mainstream their issues efficiently.
