A woman with cere­bral pal­sy says she has been grap­pling with em­ploy­ment chal­lenges de­spite en­deav­our­ing against the odds in her aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits. Ar­lene Alexan­der, 54,  who has been forced to choose be­tween ac­cess­ing a dis­abil­i­ty grant and a salary is rais­ing ques­tions about in­clu­siv­i­ty in this coun­try.

All her life Alexan­der, who now lives at Ol­era Heights in San Fer­nan­do, has had to re­ly on her wheel­chair, walk­er and her in­ner will to over­come ad­ver­si­ties.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, she ex­plained that her cere­bral pal­sy di­ag­no­sis meant that mov­ing up was chal­leng­ing in more ways than one. “I en­dured many chal­lenges, be­ing con­fined to a wheel­chair most times. My mum passed away when I was 9 and I went to live with my grand­moth­er, she was the on­ly par­ent I knew at the time. How­ev­er my health is­sues wors­ened and I was 75 per cent de­pen­dent on help and as­sis­tance,” she ex­plained.

De­spite Alexan­der’s med­ical con­di­tion which is clas­si­fied as a group of neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders that ap­pear in in­fan­cy or ear­ly child­hood and per­ma­nent­ly af­fect body move­ment and mus­cle co­or­di­na­tion, her ap­petite for a bet­ter life kept grow­ing. As a pupil of the Pep­per Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Alexan­der ex­celled and ad­vanced to the Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School. Fu­elled by the as­pi­ra­tion of el­e­vat­ing her stan­dard of liv­ing, Alexan­der jour­neyed to the doors of the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts (COSTATT) in San Fer­nan­do in a bold bid to re­alise her dream.

“I will think why am I do­ing this but there was a will pow­er in­side of me telling me to keep go­ing, I trav­elled most times to school, there were times taxi dri­vers will see me at the bot­tom of the hill, I will take my walk­er and walk down the hill, it was nev­er ever easy and the dri­vers would stop and say that they were amazed that some­one like me was go­ing to school.”

At the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion, Alexan­der, through funds from her own dis­abil­i­ty grant, earned her As­so­ciate De­gree as well as her BSc in Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment all while still leap­ing over hur­dles.

“There was a time I was pur­su­ing a course and I fell ill and I had to be hos­pi­talised.”

But for the last six years, Alexan­der said all her ef­forts to af­ford her­self a bet­ter stan­dard of life have seem­ing­ly gone in vain she has been un­able to find a job. She said this ex­pos­es the chal­lenges dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple face when striv­ing for equal op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Why should we have to be placed in a sit­u­a­tion where we have to make a choice. There are times when some­one can make a choice whether they choose to get a dis­abil­i­ty grant or choose to not get one whilst work­ing, I think that de­pends on the in­di­vid­ual and the na­ture of the work,” she lament­ed.

Alexan­der ex­pressed frus­tra­tions at be­ing judged based on her phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions rather than qual­i­fi­ca­tions and po­ten­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the work­place. She said her sit­u­a­tion re­flect­ed a larg­er so­ci­etal is­sue and called for a re­view of the poli­cies re­gard­ing di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­siv­i­ty.