13 hours ago
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ABUJA – Country Director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Office for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Vanessa Phala, has advocated effective social inclusion policies, especially for People With Disabilities, PWDs, to mainstream them in the society.
Phala, who met with a number of PWDs in Abuja, as part of activities commemorating the World Day for Social Justice, said there was need for all stakeholders to strengthen social inclusion policies.
Speaking on this year’s theme, “Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion for People with Disabilities,” Phala said social justice revolves around creating actions and adopting policies that actually promote and facilitate access to opportunities for everybody.
According to her, increasing access to social justice for people with disabilities should not be an exclusive preserve for some, but all citizens.
“We convened here, to commemorate the World Social Justice day, to have this inclusive conversation and create a space, a dialogue, a platform for PWDs to come and share some of their insights.
“We are also here to see what we can do better to make sure that this social justice that we are pursuing for, is not exclusive but it includes everybody.
“I want to believe that as we continue, we now have a network of persons with disabilities that we must also make sure that we mainstream into our activities,” the ILO Country Director stated.
Phala, however, assured that the ILO would ensure that no one is left behind as it concerns access to social justice.
Corroborating Phala’s views, Emmanuel Igbinosun, Director, Productivity Measurement and Labour Standards, at the Ministry of Labour and Employment, noted that existing statistics shows that there were 29 to 30 million people living with disabilities.
He lamented that the number was quite significant adding that it was over 12.5 per cent of the country’s population.
According to him, the Ministry will continue to collaborate with its tripartite partners and the ILO to achieve social justice for PWDs in the country.
“The Decent Work Country’s document is a strategic framework of the ILO intervention in Nigeria.
“It is in alignment with Nigeria economic realities and we are hoping that in this implementation of the Decent Work Country Three, we will collaborate more with our partners,” he said.
Meanwhile, Patience Dikson, one of the PWDs observed that there was need for synergy between government, employers of labour to ensure social inclusion of PWDs in their workplaces.
According to her, we want many people and organisations to start talking about social inclusion of PWDs and also putting it in their work.
“We want to have inclusion policies, we want to have policy implementation of advancing issues for people with disabilities,” she said.
Dikson also advocated for the review of disability law, stressing that the law has to be all encompassing.
She added that we are advocating for disability review of the law because it doesn’t actually reference women with disability. It’s all about persons with disability.
“There are peculiar issues around women with disability, and also children with disability, elders with disability.
“In fact, it has to be all encompassing to also include allies such as family, who have been doing a lot for persons with disabilities.
“So we have been advocating for that, and I hear that advocacy is yielding fruit, that this will soon be resolved, it’s a great milestone for us, so that we can have a more inclusive policy or law,” she added.
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