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We need integrated schools for the blind in Tamale — Ghana Blind Union

The youth and students wing of the Ghana Blind Union in Tamale has appealed to the government to open integrated schools for visually-impaired pupils and students in the Northern Region to join their sighted colleagues in studying from the kindergarten to the tertiary levels of education.

They said since there were no such schools in the Northern Region, parents had to travel long distances with their visually impaired children outside the region to enable them to have access to education.

That, the union said, had denied many visually impaired children in the region access to formal education, since most parents did not have the resources to send their children to the integrated schools for both the visually impaired and the sighted outside the region.

The President of the youth and students wing of the union, Mr Abdulia Mohammed Awal, who made the appeal at a meet-the-press series of the union in Tamale last Saturday, said those who also had access to education did not have access to braille materials which affected their academic performance.

Currently, the only school for the visually impaired in the north is the Wa School for the Blind, with one school for the blind also in Akropong in the Eastern Region and the Wenchi and Okuapeman Senior High Schools that integrate both the sighted and the visually impaired.

Employment

Mr Awal said visually impaired professionals and graduates were also denied employment, since most employers thought people with disabilities (PWDs) could not perform.

He, therefore, appealed to the government to create job opportunities for professionals and graduates with disabilities to earn a decent living, and challenged employers to also give them the opportunity to prove their worth.

Mr Awal said PWDs were discriminated against in all spheres in the society and appealed to the government to do more to help integrate them into the society.

A former President of the union, Mr Imoro Mohammed, who is also an Assistant Director at the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, who demonstrated the use of the braille to positively impact on the academic performance of visually impaired students, appealed to the government and philanthropists to provide them with braille materials and embosser to print textbooks for use by visually impaired students in the country to enhance their studies.

Appeal 

Mr Mohammed also appealed to the management of the Graphic Communications Group Limited to acquire the braille embosser and print copies of the newspaper in braille to enable the visually impaired to have access to the Daily Graphic and other publications of the company.

Madam Comfort Ayomah, on behalf of parents of the children with disabilities who were affiliated members of the union, appealed to the government to provide skills and training for children with disabilities, particularly those in the special schools to enable them to acquire employable skills to support themselves, instead of the normal education given to them like the normal children.

She said she had a mentally challenged child in the Savelugu Special School, near Tamale, and some of the students there were in their 30s  and had still not graduated from the school.

She, therefore, stressed the need for the special schools to equip students with employable skills and also to have an exit plan for them to be on their own after graduation, instead of keeping them in the schools.

Madam Ayomah further appealed to the government to employ trained teachers and other professionals with disabilities to teach or serve as resource persons in the integrated and special schools for  PWDs.

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