Disability does not affect my work -NSS administrator
‘Disability is not inability’, so goes a popular saying and for Mr Raphael Adu-Agyapong, the Ashanti Regional Administrator of the National Service Scheme (NSS), this statement is real and valid.
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The 29-year-old physically-challenged, who uses crutches to facilitate his movement, has gone through a lot before rising to his current position and has a lot to tell about his success story.
Raph, as he is popularly called, was born to Mr James Adumatta, 60, and Mary Adumatta, 58, and hails from Kotei, near Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region.
Though he was born with disability; limping on both legs, that did not stop him from making progress in life.
He attended the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Senior High School in 1999 and completed in 2001 as a General Arts student with elective subjects in Economics, Geography and Elective Mathematics.
For further academic pursuit, he read a Bachelor of Arts degree (BA) in Economics and Sociology at the KNUST from 2002 to 2006 and undertook his national service at his alma matter, KNUST SHS, which he completed in August, 2007.
Ever since he was employed as the Ashanti Regional Administrator of the NSS, his interest and quest to pursue a Master’s degree and to become a professor someday has not departed from him.
“I always have a dream to become somebody in academia. Sticking to books to make an easy life, especially as a physically-challenged person,” he stated.
He further stated: “When I see people with high academic background on television, hear of them on radio and read of them in the newspapers, I love being like them”.
Workplace
At his workplace, he enjoys the company of his colleagues and enjoys the love of his immediate boss, who is the Ashanti Regional Director of the NSS, Mr Kwesi Quainoo, as well as the Kumasi Metro Director of the NSS, Mr Emmanuel Asiedu-Boafo.
The entire staffs of the Ashanti office of the NSS and the national service personnel provide him good company and their show of companionship, friendliness and love for one another is a great source of inspiration to Mr Adu-Agyapong.
He added that: “In fact, I do not find any difference between them as abled-persons and myself when it comes to work”.
He does not feel the stigmatisation of being a physically-challenged person as he drives his own Toyota Corrolla car in and out of his office.
Not only does Mr Adu-Agyapong recount his success story in academia and work capabilities, but as a staunch Christian, he has demonstrated some acts of greater achievements at his church, Saint Benedict Catholic Church at Kotei.
He had been the secretary to a youth group at the church known as “Legion of Mary,” where he was and still offers advice to the youth of the church to guard against drug trafficking and serve as an inspiration and a model of hope to the youth as well.
Apart from being an executive member of the group, his presence alone as a physically-challenged person being an administrator at his office, serves as a source of inspiration to the youth and even the elderly.
Challenges
In early stages of his life, Mr Adu-Agyapong suffered the ordeal of movements, especially in the use of public transport, saying that “struggling with passengers as a poor physically-challenged person makes me feel inferior, hopeless and uncertain”.
“Most times, the public pity the disabled. They wish that a disabled person was an able person and this makes it very tough for the survival of the fittest,” he decried.
At workplace, he sometimes faces difficulty in climbing stairs using crutches.
Advice
He advises the youth in general, both those without disability and disabled, to have vision and choose the right role models so as to achieve a successful life.
In the same vein, he asked the general public to change their attitude towards persons with disability and urges them to rather have a positive attitude towards persons with disability.
He said family members, siblings, workmates, friends, colleagues and other agents of socialisation must see themselves as tools of encouragement.
Mr Adu-Agyapong advised his fellow disabled persons not to lose hope and strive to always achieve success, saying that “it is only the dead person who cannot do anything”.
He called on the government to resource the Ghana Society of the Physically-Disabled (GSPD), a body under the auspices of the Department of Social Welfare, to effectively equip members in terms of education sponsorship or scholarship and skills training.
To those in the streets, he asked that their family members should take good care of them rather than abandoning them in the streets.
He commended the Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, Dr Henry Seidu Daana, a visually-impaired person, for achieving that feat.
By Joseph Kyei-Boateng/Ghana