Story: Mary Ankrah
THE Ghana National Association for the Deaf (GNAD) has appealed to the government to provide sign language interpreters in all tertiary institutions in the country.
The association has also urged the government to take up the responsibility for paying those interpreters it would provide for the tertiary institutions to reduce the burden on deaf students.
That, they said, would improve the performance of their members and enable them attain quality education, which is one of their human rights.
The National President of GNDA, Mr Emmanuel Sackey, made the appeal at an education seminar in Accra.
The seminar which was organised by the association, examined some of the challenges that deaf students faced in the various tertiary institutions in order to petition the government, principals of tertiary institutions, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), district directors of education and civil society organisations, and other organisations concerned with disability issues.
The seminar was expected to persuade the government and tertiary institutions to understand the needs of deaf students and help them overcome the hurdles they encounter in their education.
Speaking at the seminar, Mr Sackey said deaf students had several challenges, compared to those with other disabilities who had been provided with the needed facilities to improve their access to education.
“We are paying our taxes yet we are not enjoying facilities that the government should provide. This is blatant disregard for our rights to education and we can no long bear it”, he stated.
Mr Sackey observed that in spite of the challenges deaf students were facing in some tertiary institutions, the government was not ready to work with deaf people to enable them have equal rights to education and, therefore, called on the government to expedite their request.
In view of that, he said most of the deaf students in institutions which do not have interpreters had to quit school.
The Director of Operations at the National Council for Persons with Disability, Dr Neal Boafo, recommended that the interpreters who would be posted into the institutions should be recruited and trained to equip them with the requisite knowledge and technology to enable them to communicate well to students who are deaf.
To do that, he said, in the short term the government should identify specific tertiary institutions with sign language interpreters so that deaf students could access them while in the long term it provides some and ensures that all tertiary institutions comply with the directive to have such interpreters so that all students would have equal access to education.
According to the Director, Special Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Ms Rosemond Ndama Blay, the GES caters for interpreters for the students who are deaf at the basic and secondary level, adding that it was the responsibility of tertiary institutions to provide those facilities for such students.
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