By FABIAN EKERUCHE

The Joint National Association of Persons With Disability (JONAPWD), Lagos State chapter, has listed a seven- point demand from the Lagos State Government concerning their plight.

The Chairman JONAPWD Lagos chapter, Dr Adebukola Adebayo, stated this at a news conference on Thursday in Lagos.

Adebayo said that the association wants the government to constitute the Governing Board of the Lagos Office for Disability Affairs (LASODA) with all disability clusters represented.

He said the constitution of the board was critical in order to give direction and inclusiveness and transparency in the management of the agency.

The chairman urged the government to initiate an independent audit of the agency and its managers to expose the fraud and corruption in the execution of projects and non-compliance with the Lagos State Procurement law.

“Ensure the immediate disbursement of unpaid N100,000 and N50,000 empowerment and social security support fund respectively to all beneficiaries.

“End the favoritisms in allocating funds to specific disability clusters, which have led to the marginalization of some disability groups in the state.

“Qualified professionals and specialists in all the disability types be employed and deployed to LASODA with a view to ensuring that concerns of each disability type receives proper and professional attention,” Adebayo said.

The chairman also wants the government to ensure the creation of disability desks manned by qualified professionals in critical MDAs to facilitate functional and institutional interaction between LASODA and the various MDAs.

JONAPWD also asked the government to ensure that PWDs and their legitimate organizations be constantly consulted and carried along in the design, planning, implementation and monitoring of disability inclusion in all policies, programs and projects of government at state and local levels.

The association said that ignoring their demands would only ridicule the commitment and investment of the governor to guarantee inclusive development for PWDs through LASODA.

“We believe that the Governor is committed to addressing the plights of PWDs in the state and that our requests would be granted to ensure that the laudable plans of the governor for Lagos residents with disabilities yield necessary impact.

“JONAPWD Lagos, and different clusters, at different times have submitted petitions to the Lagos State Government, which has not received any response or action.

“We have also set up different mediation mechanisms to address these gaps but none has yielded any positive result so far.

“We would like to emphasise that failure to address our concerns within the next 14 days would be tantamount to the neglect of over 2.5 million PWDs in the state.

“And we would be forced to embark on protests till something happens,” Adebayo said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that other cluster heads who spoke called for a more inclusive system of education in the state with assistive technologies to assist PWDs. (NAN)

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