Public Agenda (Accra)
Frederick Asiamah
25 July 2008
The State's responsibility of providing social protection for the most vulnerable and marginalized revolves around the Department of Social Welfare. The department, an agency of the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment (MMYE), carries out its mandate through offices located in all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs).
The department's constituents include orphans, destitute, persons with disabilities (PWDs), etc. In fact, the department is the agency through which government recognizes and deals with organisations of people with disabilities (OPWDs), particularly the Ghana Federation of Disabled (GFD) and its entire member OPWDs.
But lately, OPWDs and many district officers of the department have become foes rather than partners; the main source of antagonism being alleged collusion of such officers with district chief executives to deny OPWDs their share of the District Assemblies' Common Fund (DACF).
For example, in the Akuapem South Municipality, OPWDs and the welfare officer have been at loggerheads for sometime now following a rejection of a supposed rehabilitation centre project by the OPWDs on grounds that it lacked transparency.
In the Upper Manya Krobo and Yilo Krobo districts, similar lamentations of OPWDs abound. Leaders of PWDs claimed that they were not being supported by social welfare officers. Consequently, DCEs there have not released their Common Funds to them because the DCEs preferred to deal with OPWDs through the district social welfare officers.
Some of these disagreements were first heard publicly a couple of weeks back, during the introduction of a project called "Strengthening the Disability Movement in Ghana", a joint initiative by the GFD and two of its member OPWDs - the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD) and the Ghana Association of the Blind (GAB).
Mrs. Margaret D. Kutsoati, Director, Department of Social Welfare, found the stories very unpleasant and a dent on the image of the department. She, therefore, assured members of OPWDs that her outfit would readily deal with district welfare officers who were found culpable of thwarting efforts at improving the lot of PWDs and all vulnerable groups.
Nonetheless, she acknowledged, "Of course there are bad nuts in every job," promising, "officers who do not want to work would be shown the door."
She encouraged OPWDs to report officers who refused to support them in their efforts for prompt actions to be taken.
According to her, "The time for ebeye yie (it shall be well) is over. If you don't report we won't know." She also said the time of considering persons with disability as non-productive people was over.
In 2005 and 2006, the Central Government, with the approval of Parliament, decided to allocate up to 5% of the District Assemblies' Common Fund (DACF) to support initiatives of PWDs. Subsequently in 2007 and 2008, the government was more specific, providing in the Guidelines for utilization of DACF that "Two percent (2%) shall be utilized to support initiatives" of PWDs.
Mr Joshua Magnus Nicol, Administrator of the DACF explained sometime ago that "The fund is available only to the association of disabled in the district. Therefore to access the fund, the request should come from the Association or Federation of the Disabled," stressing, the association in the district should be recognized by Department of Social Welfare.
He also clarified that this fund was meant to assist PWDs to organize programmes to create awareness about their activities, their rights and obligations, etc. However, it was not to be used as a micro-credit fund.
However, most District Assemblies have not released any funds to the OPWDs. In other cases, assemblies have failed to fully account for the quantum of money due the OPWDs. This anomaly has largely been attributed to the lack of co-operation between welfare officers and OPWDs.
Recall that in March this year, the Greater Accra Regional Branch of the GSPD dragged all district assemblies within the region to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in an effort to retrieve unpaid Common Fund monies.
Notwithstanding these cases, there has been a bright spot. The Birim Central Metropolitan Assembly has been noted as the sole assembly to have accounted for every pesewa of allocations for PWDs as part of the Common Fund transfers, at least, for the year 2007.
Hon. Kwame Busumtwi, Chief Executive, Birim Central saw to it that a special committee was set up to liaise with the social services committee of the assembly to ensure that OPWDs maximized the utilization of the fund.
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