Disabled community goes royal blue on Monday
Disabilities Act finally takes effect
Published:Monday | February 14, 2022 | 12:07 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
The Combined Disabilities Association (CDA) is appealing to its members and the wider society to join in solidarity with the lobby today by wearing royal blue to celebrate the activation of the Disabilities Act.
February 14 has traditionally been celebrated as Valentine’s Day, a day for lovers, with gifts and clothing in red and white, but CDA Executive Director Gloria Goffe wants Jamaicans to deviate by wearing the colour promoted by Disabilities International as a global symbol of advocacy for the marginalised group.
Today’s activities coinciding with the legislation’s effective date are being supported by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities.
“We initiated it as a sector and they welcomed the idea and came on board and we will be doing quite a number of things in observance of the day, but we also recognise that we have a responsibility to ensure that the act is enforced,” Goffe declared.
Even though the bill received bipartisan support when the accompanying regulations were passed into law last October, Opposition Leader Mark Golding was not convinced that enough work had been done, especially by the State, to facilitate compliance with the Disabilities Act.
“This building that we are in now is not friendly to the disabled. It is very difficult for persons with disabilities to come upstairs. There is no elevator ... . The question of access is real, the absence of ramps for persons with physical disabilities, rails on which they can hold, elevators for buildings with more than one storey, and so on. These are very important issues,” he pointed out then.
Goffe delivered such a robust address on February 12, 2019, to a joint select committee on the Occupational Safety and Health Bill, 2017, that lawmakers vowed to treat with urgency legislation affecting the persons with disabilities.
After receiving a 198-page document four days earlier, Goffe and the chairman of the CDA, Henrietta Davis-Wray, presented on behalf of the community, despite the short time during which they were forced to undertake a comprehensive review of the draft document.
Goffe, who is blind, pressed home the cause of the disabled in just about 11 minutes, homing in on critical areas and appealing for provisions from the Disabilities Act 2014, the Building Act 2018, and the Public Health Act to be incorporated into the long-overdue legislation.
“Thorough and very relevant presentation,” said consultant psychiatrist Dr Saphire Longmore. Colleague lawmakers Kavan Gayle and Don Wehby were equally effusive in praise.
Gayle, a veteran trade unionist, was particularly impressed that Goffe was able to undertake a creditable review even though the document received by the group had to be converted to Braille in short order.
“Maybe today we would have had a more extensive presentation by this group, had they received the bill in a format that would have been conducive to their situation,” he said.