Disabled board queries census form

By ALISON ANIS
The national population census to be conducted next Monday does not include specific questions on people with disabilities, National Board for Disabled Persons chairman Brown Kapi says.
“It seems that people with disabilities will miss the census bandwagon and get left behind again for another 10 years because they won’t be asking the two most important questions on disability to get realistic figure on the group during the coming census,” Kapi said on Tuesday.
He criticised the National Statistical Office and particularly the user advisory group that included the departments of education, health and community development for agreeing to disqualify the two specific questions to determine figures on disabled people.
“The programme is not inclusive because questions on disability groups have been mostly generalised and will not give us details on the disabled population and how we should plan effectively for them,” he said.
“The government, as the mandated custodian, has failed to fulfil constitutional obligations,” Kapi said.
He said since last year they had been pushing for the NSO and census team to include in the census questionnaire form if a person was disabled and what type of disability he or she had.
National Statistician Joseph Aka said most of the questions on the census form were generalised because of the lack of space.
“We have included in the form one or two questions to cater for this category of persons. Such questions relate to performance work and allows us to cater for disabled persons,” Aka said.
He said a specific data survey needed to be done for people with disabilities.
Kapi was not satisfied with Aka’s response, saying this was now a rights-based issue and “defeats the very spirit of the Constitution”.
“We asked if there was time to do changes to the forms but it seems everything has been finalised so we will look at other options to make sure people with disabilities are captured fully in the census,” he said.