Accurate data vital: Solomon

National

By HELEN TARAWA
Accurate data and statistics for persons with disabilities are important for planning processes, Secretary Community Development and Religion Secretary Anna Solomon says.
Speaking at the opening of the first Central province persons with disabilities survey/data collection training of trainers workshop at Babaka on Monday, Solomon said: “One of the biggest gaps in the disabilities policies is statistics, data.  I cannot use the 15 per cent global estimation; PNG is not like other countries.
“We don’t’ want to use the global measurement, we must do ours and see how many there are.
“I want to leaders in the country to know how many (people with) disabilities are in their electorate.
“People with disability have seen that they have rights just like you and me.
“Now it’s the rights-based approach, it’s that model where we are looking at where let’s just advocate for your rights, you are citizens just like everybody else.”
Solomon said the policy that the Government had delivered last year was related to a rights-based approach and the vision was to remove barriers and make the rights real.
“We are now talking about a whole country approach where we start removing those barriers. So every agency in the work that they do there are barriers that they will have to remove when they build the roads, when they build the schools and when they build the hospitals.”
The  workshop at Babaka this week is funded by the European Union (Fiji) under its building, safety and resilience pacific project.
Participants from Goilala, Kairuku-Hiri, Rigo and Abau districts.