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Enact law to ensure rights of people with disabilities

Speakers tell minister

Staff Correspondent
Speakers at a seminar yesterday called on the government to review the Disability Welfare Act 2001. saving that it is not consistent with the standards set out by the United Nations Convention onjhe Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other international gadgets on disability rights.
It has become imperative to enact a new law regarding the rights of the people with disabilities in order to bring the disability act in conformity with the provisions of the UN convention, they said.
They also called for changes in the people's attitude towards physically challenged people.
Action on Disability and Development (ADD) organised the seminar on 'Towards a New Disability Law in the Light of UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre in the city.
Criticising the existing law regarding disability, the speakers said Bangladesh still pursues a welfare model without thinking of the rights of the disabled.
Furthermore, the disability act has major deficiencies in terms of lack of accountability, lack of representation in the committees, immunity from suit, scope of authorities to exercise arbitrary and undue power and lack of permanent institutional mechanism, said Dr Abdhullah Al Faruque, associate professor and chairman of the department of Law. University of Chittagong, in his written speech.
The act does not specify the diverse needs and rights of the people with disability, he added.
The speakers said 10 percent of
the total population are physically challenged and half of them are hardcore poor.
They also said that 96 percent of children with disabilities do not have access to primary education and even the people with disabilities do not have access to microcredit.
Prof Muzaffer Ahmad, chairman ofTransparency International Bangladesh (TIB), was present as the special guest in the first session moderated by Mark Harrison of East Anglia University.
Farah Kabir, country director, ActionAid Bangladesh, Prof Dr Mizanur Rahman of Dhaka University, Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, editor of The Bangladesh Observer. Father RW Timm, human rights activist, and Prof Michael Stein of Harvard University also spoke in the first session.
"As there is little implementation of law in this country, enactment of law only cannot do much. At the same time, it is not possible to force the people to showing humane attitude towards the people with disabilities," Brig Gen (retd) Abdul Malek, special assistant of the chief adviser, said and urged all to launch a social movement in this regard.
He was the chief guest at the second session of the seminar.
Dr Naim Ahmed, advocate. Supreme Court, Khandakar Jahurul Alam, president. National Forum of Organisations Working with the Disabled (NFOWD), Dr Shirin S Chowdhury, advocate. Supreme Court, Secretary of the Ministry of Social Welfare MA Hye Howlader, Barrister Sara Hossain and Dr Stefan Frowein, ambassador and head of delegation of the European Commission, were also present.