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A challenge the media should meet with pride
2007-09-20 09:49:10
By Editor
Yet another challenge has been thrown to the media - this time by Education and Vocational Training minister Margaret Sitta.
This one relates to the part they should play in helping people with disabilities feel at home despite their being physically or otherwise disadvantaged.
The minister`s official duties have a direct bearing on the interests and needs of the hundreds of thousands of our people who have to contend with various forms of disabilities.
It was thus most appropriate that she chose the occasion of Monday`s opening of a seminar in Dar es Salaam to call upon the media to sensitise society on the plight of those particular people so that they get enough of the assistance and support they so badly need to lead normal lives.
In what some could see as a case of belabouring an issue that has been addressed too vigorously, at too many forums and for far too long but to little effect, the minister said she would appreciate seeing and hearing the media reporting accurately on issues associated with disabilities.
She said doing so would awaken the nation into making those issues part of its socio-economic growth strategies, with the thrust on poverty eradication initiatives.
The minister made a particularly valid point when she said the media have what they need to help people with disabilities fight for their rights by drawing the attention of the various authorities and the public to the fact that properly ``facilitated and empowered``, they can as effectively contribute to the country`s growth and development as all other people.
We find every reason to agree with minister Sitta that Tanzania has enough constitutional and other provisions which, if fully and fittingly exploited and implemented, have the capacity to transform people with disabilities from beggars into productive community members as fully involved in nation-building endeavours as their physical, mental and general condition allows them to be.
It was once part of the government`s policy that the only people whose upkeep the State would be responsible for were children still at too tender an age to care for themselves, senior citizens, and those people who the State was yet to provide with the means to ensure their survival.
It also once used to be part of government policy for people considered completely without the ability to fend for themselves to be moved into centres specially set up for the purpose - until institutions like the United Nations and human rights groups advised that doing so amounted to segregation based on considerations that were as irrelevant as they were discriminative and dehumanising.
It has since been emphasized that community-based care was among the best ways of dealing with the plight of the poor, a category under which many people with incapacitating disabilities usually fall.
However, suitably empowering those among these people able to fend for themselves if adequately supported remains clearly all the better and more rewarding option. There is abundant proof of that which the media and society could build on.
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