JUST two days after the world celebrated International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the South African cabinet has proposed a new policy to hold accountable those who do not uphold the rights of people with disabilities.
The new policy called the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will see a number of people, including architects who design (inaccessible) buildings, to town planners who pass the building plans, to the project managers who supervise construction could be held accountable.
“The human resource manager who doesn’t meet the 2% (employment target) will also be held accountable. We are no longer going to be asking people why, We are going to hold them accountable,” said social development deputy minister, Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu.
The Deputy Minister said while the policy framework is in place to protect the rights of people with disabilities, there was still a huge challenge in societal attitudes and outlook towards disability.
“There’s nothing more painful than getting into public transport and not being greeted by anybody and everybody is just staring at you, and you wheel yourself into a building and you are not even welcomed.
“That is the biggest discrimination that will require South Africans to dig deeper into their hearts and souls and begin to grant people with disabilities the same status that they want to be given,” she said.
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