The survey done by the departments of Social Sciences and Statistics of Makerere University involved 10,000 households selected from regions across the country.
Research findings released by Makerere University show that people
living with disabilities (PWDs) encounter major challenges when it comes to
access to services like health, education and later on employment.
The survey done by the departments of Social Sciences and
Statistics of Makerere University involved 10,000 households selected from
regions across the country.
Speaking to the media at the launch of the report on Monday, Prof.
Julius Omona who was the lead investigator said that they set out to establish
the living conditions of people living with various disabilities and how they
are involved in the development process.
He notes that while government came up with a programme of offering
a disability grant for PWDs at sub-county level, many of their respondents said
they had never accessed the money and yet even those that had accessed it, had
not gotten economically empowered.
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With the grant, the disabled are supposed to be organized in
groups and 5 million shillings is allocated to them to engage in a specified
project but the researcher says these never take off partly because the start-up
capital is small yet others are limited by other hurdles to do with exposure
and lack of education.
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Among school-going PWDs, they found that many drop out especially
in secondary school when they start discovering that they are actually
challenged on what they can do. The school dropout rate was lower among
students who attend special needs schools.
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Commenting on the findings, Hellen Grace Asamo, the PWD MP for
Eastern Uganda said that the biggest challenge they are facing is to do with
access to information. She said while many government programmes have recently
started to cater for PWDs many don’t know about their existence and how to
benefit from them.
Asamo, says that this financial year, government added
Shs2.1billion to the disability grant and now they are now pushing that this
money is accessed depending on a person’s specific disability after realizing
that so many people who may not qualify were using the money at the expense of
the rightful beneficiaries.
According to the researcher, this new data should
help in increasing advocacy for PWDs and to find employable fixes that can
offer meaningful gains and change their living conditions.
