THE National Association for Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) have blasted the Electoral Act for not being sensitive to the needs of the disabled during elections.
VENERANDA LANGA
They also said the vote of people with disabilities during the forthcoming referendum and elections was so significant that it could give an outright win to any political party which included the disability agenda in its manifesto.
NASCOH technical advisor Fambaineni Innocent Magweba told Parliament’s Millenium Development Goals Thematic Committee on Tuesday that on many occasions able-bodied legislators crafted legislative barriers that made it impossible for members of his organisation to fully exercise their democratic rights.
“We have legislation causing barriers, for example the Electoral Act which requires that a visually challenged person should be assisted to vote by four people – automatically removing the right of secrecy of the vote of that person,”said Magweba.
“About 20%, that is one in every five disabled persons, don’t have birth certificates and identity documents and it means a crucial 700 000 votes from people with disabilitities can be lost and these people have not been given voter education.”
He said the Electoral Act could have been crafted in a way where requisite materials like Braille would be provided for the visually impaired to vote secretly.
“The difference between the 2008 votes garnered by President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was not even bigger than the number of disabled people. Votes by people with disabilities can make a candidate win outright and the political party which wants to win should put the disability agenda in their manifesto,”he said.
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Magweba said they had been left out in the campaigns for the “Yes” vote during the referendum. NASCOH programmes officer for research and advocacy Tsarai Mungoni said the draft constitution defined disabled people as physically and mentally-challenged people only, leaving out sensory disabilities such as albinism.
“The draft also says the government shall endeavour to ensure there is availability of resources to assist people with disabilities.
This is an apologetic clause and we cannot have it because it doesn’t impose imperatives on the government to assist people with disabilities,” Mungoni said.
He said the Disabled Persons Act of 1992 remained a pie in the sky as it had no meaningful remedies for the disabled people.
