‘People living with disability are still human, deserve the best service’
Field service brigades discovered when attending to specific cases of GBV among people with disability in families that there is a limit to the help given.
Mamelodi stakeholders and different government departments came together to raise awareness of GBV amongst people living with disability.
The awareness campaign was organised by the Department of Community Safety and was held at the Mamelodi community hall last Friday.
Thami Mogomane of community safety said the GBV and femicide disability awareness campaign was held following the challenges their community safety field service brigades come across on a daily basis.
He said they discovered a limitation when attending to specific cases of GBV in families on how to assist them.
Mogomane said, for example, a deaf or mute person referred to the departments or social workers for help suffered secondary abuse because of their inability to accommodate people with disability.
“The aim of the awareness campaign is to acknowledge that we are failing them, and we want to put a stop to it by forming a forum to help GBV victims by making sure all departments can help even people with disability,” he said.
“People living with disability are still human and they deserve the best services.
“We want to give them hope that there is help for them and we acknowledge the challenges they are going through on a daily basis,” he said.
Some of the challenges have been identified and there is an intervention already.
“We stayed this long to deal with the issue and are happy that Mamelodi has a lot of stakeholders dealing with people with disability, from the schools to taxi associations,” said Mogomane.
“The response from Mamelodi stakeholders including the community was a success and the people with disability also had the opportunity to talk about their daily challenges.”
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