Ugandan Persons With Disabilities Demand Hearing Aids, SLIs
A section of Deaf persons in Masindi District in Uganda has asked their government to consider buying hearing aids for them and appointing more sign language interpreters in public offices and health facilities to ease service delivery.
“As leaders of PWDs, we have proposed to the district council to use the money for capacity building grants to train sign language interpreters for some police officers and health workers because when they receive such people, they don’t have skills to attend to them,” they said.
They lamented that the lack of hearing aids and sign language interpreters in most public offices and health facilities deprives them of their right to access information.
The district councilor Mr. William Mwambu who is also a representative of persons with disabilities (PWDs), on Monday said the number of Deaf persons in the area is on the rise yet the majority can’t afford to buy hearing aids which is a major hindrance to their information access.
“To access these hearing aids we need to first make an order abroad, which takes months, and above all, they are expensive; a pair is about Shs6 million which our people can’t afford," said the councilor.
Mr. Mwambu observed that there is a big information gap in health facilities, especially for pregnant mothers who seek antenatal and counseling services because of a lack of language interpreters.
Mr Juma Rusoke, whose four-year-old child is deaf, said the latter has not started school because most schools don’t have sign language interpreters who are teachers.
"It would be better if the government buys them for us, I will wait until my child is five years old and I look for a school where they have sign language teachers such that he can learn,” he said.
Source: Uganda Monitor News
Tags: Signstv Assit All Uganda Pwds Slis Hearing Aids
