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Fungai Lupande Mash Central Bureau

The Registrar General’s office in Mashonaland Central has intensifed home visit programmes for birth and national identification cards registration of people with disability as the province opens its arms wider for mainstreaming disability into the development agenda.

Bindura Municipality has relocated its housing department to the ground offices to ensure its services are accessible to everyone including people with disabilities.

Pfura Rural District Council recently completed building a wheelchair friendly public toilet in Mt Darwin.

The positive developments comes as youths with disability program started by Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) and Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe (LCDZ)’s has started yielding positive results.

Launched in 2019, the three year programme funded by the European Union (EU) is being implemented in three districts. 903 youths in Bindura,Shamva and Rushinga with disabilities have been registered so far.

Previously, Bindura had only one organisation for disabled persons’ and now six more have been created in Rushinga and two in Shamva .

DAPP programmes coordinator Mr Petros Muzuva said they have managed to penetrate rural communities where people with disability were normally left behind in developmental programmes.

“We managed to train the local leadership including chiefs and councillors on rights of people with disability. We also trained Government ministries and journalists, unpacking the United Nations Convention on Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD),” he said.

“Most importantly we trained youth with disabilities on their rights and our target group is 15 to 35 years. When people with disabilities understand and know their rights and communities is educated on the rights they can support them to live a dignified life with no obstacles and walls for inclusion.”

He said while the Millennium Development Goals did not talk much about people with disabilities, the Sustainable Development Goal number 10 talks about equality of people and this includes people with disabilities.

“The programme is also trying to empower youth with disability to move from the charity model to human based model where they have the means to survive within their communities.”

Failure to break down traditional attitudes towards people with disabilities was identified as another emerging issue preventing effective mainstreaming of disability.