United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities emphasizes the right of children with disabilities to a full and decent life in conditions that ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child’s active participation in the community.
Article 24 of the convention recognizes the right of children with disabilities to receive healthcare and integration within their community.
It also enjoins that children with disabilities and their families receive early support and services.
However, this is not the situation for 50 years old visually impaired, Fuseini Yusuf and five children suffering from speech and mental disorders at Akyem New Tafo in the Abuakwa North Municipality of the Eastern Region.
All male children with ages 13, 11, 9, 7, and 5 years live with their visually impaired father – Fuseini Yusif who is a beggar.
Their frustrated mother neglected them in 2014 noticing the strange condition of her children leaving the burden of parenting to the visually impaired husband who has since been improvising to take care of the children.
“It is true, I got married and we gave birth to five children all of them being boys. Then after that there were a lot of problems were confronted with -all the children can’t talk also they have mental so my wife decided to quit the marriage and leave us after she was advised by some people in the community, so she finally quit the marriage and left I and the five children”.Fuseini told mybrytfmonline.com reporter Kojo Ansah.
He narrated further ” So far I know I don’t have family, even though my parents are dead long time ago but my other relatives have decided not to care about me any longer after they realized the kind of problems I am confronted with so I am the family myself and God is my helper and yourself who is now bringing out our problems to the entire world to help us. Even this building we are sleeping under can easily collapse and it will be a tragedy but we have no option now than to bear the risk of staying in this room. But I pray that one day God should let help reach us.”
Apart from the 13-year elder son, Amdani roaming nakedly on the streets of Akyem Tafo feeding on leftover foods, the rest of the children are tied to piece of wood, locked and starved in a dilapidated room by their visually impaired father whenever leaving the house to the streets to beg for alms to take care of them.
“I was a cobbler then but I stopped since things were not going on well with me due to my blindness and the work I do and decided to go to the side of the road to beg for money to cater for myself and the five children. One of my boys is now mad and is now wandering at the lorry station, but his madness is the mild type that he can easily be cured if little medication and attention is given to him.”
Fuseini and his children are stigmatized and discriminated against by the house in which they live and to large extent the community.
“People claim the family has been cursed and being bewitched for a since committed in the family. When I leave the children on the house by the time I come they have been beaten with sticks hence injuries all over their bodies’ reason why I chain and lock them.”
He however believes with the intervention of philanthropists and the state the health of his children could be managed while dignifying life restored to the family.
“A certain Herbalist man from Awaso was here during a funeral ceremony who intends to help cure my boy but due to financial challenge to pay for the amount charged we were unable to attend to the man. I even sent him to social welfare but I was told that his condition was spiritual so I should take him to where they deal with spiritual matters”.
“You can see for yourself, this is the kind of unhygienic and poor shelter my children and I live. Now the only support I need is financial support that will help to be able to attend any eye special clinic to get healed from my blindness since I was told by one eye specialist doctor that my blindness is curable. I am the one who takes care of the children now, I wash their cloth, I bath them, cook their food, in fact when you see me in the morning I look more like a woman.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Social Welfare in Abuakwa North has picked one of the children -seven (7) year old to a social caregiver.
The Children’s Act 560 of Ghana, states that every child including Children with disabilities has the right to education. This has been reinforced with an Inclusive Education Policy which seeks to ensure that children with disabilities have equal opportunities in Education.
Until the intervention of philanthropists and the state, these children at Akyem Tafo will continue to live in dehumanized conditions and be deprived of the right to education.
Source: Mybrytonline.com/Obed Ansah
