Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox de­liv­ered what she be­lieved to be good news to the pub­lic, with an an­nounce­ment over the week­end that Gov­ern­ment will fast-track the Dis­abil­i­ty Bill to en­sure it is com­plet­ed and comes be­fore Par­lia­ment this year. The dri­ve is re­port­ed­ly part of the UN Of­fice in T&T’s project to im­ple­ment the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties in this coun­try.

Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this would be wel­comed news to some mem­bers of so­ci­ety who need the sup­port of state ser­vices the most. How­ev­er, what we have had is quite the op­po­site, with some of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­spon­si­ble for treat­ing with the con­cerns of and be­ing the voice for these in­di­vid­u­als al­ready view­ing the claim with scep­ti­cism.

And truth be told, can we re­al­ly fault them?

Even with­in fair­ly re­cent mem­o­ry, the same min­istry had draft­ed the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties in 2018 to deal with the is­sue of pro­vid­ing for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. That ex­er­cise fea­tured var­i­ous key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty, min­istry of­fi­cials, civ­il so­ci­ety, the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) and oth­er key min­istries.

The pol­i­cy doc­u­ment de­vel­oped a plan to make state fa­cil­i­ties ac­ces­si­ble, via the de­sign of prod­ucts, de­vices, ser­vices, or en­vi­ron­ments to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, and to en­sure there were no bar­ri­ers in those in­di­vid­u­als’ en­vi­ron­ment that would lim­it their abil­i­ty to func­tion.

How­ev­er, like most plans and laws aimed at mak­ing those in so­ci­ety’s low­er brack­ets com­fort­able, that pol­i­cy even­tu­al­ly found it­self on the back burn­er, as gov­ern­ment af­ter gov­ern­ment put greater fo­cus on oth­er ar­eas.

Need­less to say, Min­is­ter Cox would have done lit­tle to con­vince NGOs across the coun­try that her promise—com­ing as it did at an event host­ed by Mrs Han­nah Janoura, one of the ma­jor voic­es be­hind the move­ment to en­able per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties—would ma­te­ri­alise go­ing for­ward. Af­ter all, they’ve heard such promis­es be­fore, yet even the ba­sic need of wheel­chair ac­cess to gov­ern­ment build­ings to start with re­mains un­ful­filled and var­i­ous forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion against per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties con­tin­ue.

These were bat­tles for­mer Dis­abled Peo­ples’ In­ter­na­tion­al (DPI) pres­i­dent George Daniel took di­rect­ly to the streets in 2003, dur­ing a 116-day protest out­side state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills to high­light dis­crim­i­na­to­ry em­ploy­ment prac­tices in the com­pa­ny. Alas, he went to his grave sev­en years af­ter his protest with­out ever see­ing any of them ful­filled—and some of the sce­nar­ios he high­light­ed re­main to this day.

The plight of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties seek­ing to in­te­grate them­selves in­to so­ci­ety is most vis­i­ble in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, where piece­meal in­clu­sive ini­tia­tives lead to trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences which on­ly serve to scar those in­di­vid­u­als for life.

Of course, the ul­ti­mate ques­tion is if we can­not cater to the needs of per­sons with ob­vi­ous out­ly­ing dis­abil­i­ties, how we cater to those with hid­den dis­abil­i­ties such as at­ten­tion-deficit/hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD) and autism in a sys­tem clear­ly not at­tuned to the needs of that seg­ment of our so­ci­ety.

There­fore, this me­dia house hopes that Min­is­ter Cox’s promise is not yet an­oth­er one which flut­ters away in the wind nev­er to ma­te­ri­alise.