The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities has committed to leverage the Presidential Working Group on Disability to ensure enforcement, accountability and consequence management for non-compliance with the imperatives of empowering people with disabilities.
“Amongst the priorities for the economic empowerment of persons with disabilities, we aim to leverage the recently signed Public Procurement Act, which, among other provisions, mandates that a portion of government procurement be sourced from businesses owned and controlled by persons with disabilities,” Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga, said on Tuesday.
The Minister was speaking during the Parliamentary Debate during the end the 2024 Disability Rights Awareness Month (DRAM) campaign, held in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Outlining some of the key priorities identified by the department to uplift the wellbeing and prospects of people with disabilities, Chikunga said the department aims to leverage the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Emerging Digital Technologies to improve the wellbeing and prospects of people with disabilities.
AI by Microsoft is an application that assists visually impaired individuals by describing their surroundings, reading text, and recognising faces through smartphone cameras.
Chikunga said she recently visited the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), where she interacted with scientists working on various speech to text and text to speech technology that incorporates African languages.
She said her department has also increased the employment equity target from 2% to 3%, aiming to ensure that "all -- be it public or private sectors -- comply”.
“An additional priority added is the pairing of special schools with CSI [Corporate Social Investment] initiatives. To date, we have already conceptualised a project that will profile the state of special schools across South Africa and the educational journeys of youth with disabilities.
“This is part of a major project to pair every special school with public and private companies, which will dedicate sections of their CSI budget to support teaching and learning, assistive devices and the school’s infrastructure needs,” Chikunga said.
In light of the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Prevalence Report [The Minister was speaking at the same event, Parliamentary Debate to the end the 2024 Disability Rights Awareness Month (DRAM) campaign, held in Cape Town on Tuesday. Chikunga said the department will be recalibrating its response to the scourge, with a particular emphasis on new tools needed to reinforce the war on all acts of GBV, with an additional focus on women with disabilities.
A Prevalence Study on GBVF released recently found that the prevalence of sexual violence by a lifetime partner is twice as high for women with disabilities (at 14.6%), compared to those without (7.2%).
As South Africa assumed the G20 Presidency on 1 December 2024, and the world soon to descend on the country for the G20 Summit, Chikunga emphasised that disability inclusion will not just be one of the things the department will do throughout its calendar of events, but it will be "at the centre of everything we do".
“Disability inclusion must be a lived reality that must guide every policy, programme and action in our society. This, we will do together, for indeed, “Nothing about us without us. 365 Days of disability inclusion,” Chikunga said. – SAnews.gov.za
