March has been designated Month of the Disabled, and on the remaining Mondays this month, the DAILY NATION will focus on men who are disabled or work with people with disabilities. Today we feature Colbert Ashby, president of the Barbados National Organisation of the Disabled (BARNOD).
NO ONE can challenge Colbert Ashby’s dedication to the disabled citizens of Barbados.
Even before he took up the position as president of the Barbados National Organisation of the Disabled (BARNOD), Ashby was a volunteer transporting members to and from meetings.
For 11 years he learnt first-hand the daily struggles of people with disabilities. For the last three of them, he has been literally living their realities, as he is losing his sight to glaucoma.
“It was volunteer work where I would transport people to and from meetings. On a few occasions I hung on to see how the organisation was operating and how [individuals] fit in. I got involved then,” he said.
Understanding
“In the process of involvement I was elected as secretary for three consecutive years and after that I was placed in the position of president.
“Being president, it has opened up a lot of understanding for me among the disabled fraternity as to the challenges that they encounter on a daily basis, in terms of getting the whole of Barbados to improve conditions to suit persons with disabilities.”
Ashby said that over the years there had been many developments. The most notable was the recent installation of audible signal traffic lights to alert visually impaired people when to cross the road.
He said Government had been lobbied, also by other organisations that represented the disabled, for the lights long before he became president.
Ashby said awareness of the organisation and employment had been two other major areas of focus for BARNOD.
He is spearheading a project with the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), which had approached BARNOD. The project, which was launched recently, is designed to gather information on what can be done to assist people with disabilities to find work.
This year CTUSAB also has a campaign to encourage employers to take on people with disabilities.
Ashby said there should be a stipulation that all companies carry a quota of workers with disabilities.
“I welcome it [the CTUSAB campaign] and when I heard about it, it really touched the area which BARNOD is engaging in; the Job Prep Workshop [which prepares young people with training to access jobs]. Having as many people as possible in the community to assist the disabled is great and we are willing to work with them.”
Ashby said that as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Barbados had been doing work to get persons employed. He added that the initiative had seen a small number of people get internships and acquire a sense of independence.
“It is on a very small scale. We have at least 20 individuals who had done internships and one or two have found employment. The wheels are slowly turning and as we continue to be at the doors of employers, they seem to be hearing the voice of us crying.
Work
“If they can find employment, they can work and they also contribute to the NIS scheme rather than just taking from it,” Ashby said.
The next area for which he planned to lobby was entrepreneurship.
He is calling for the setting up of a multipurpose centre that could accommodate people with a variety of disabilities who want to pursue their interests.
“We do not want to make the disabled individual too dependent because it takes away from their will,” he said.
The president said the experience working within the disabled community for many years and being married to someone with a disability (night blindness), had taught him a lot.
“It has taught me that any person can be disabled at any time in their life. I was active, very active – driving, working and everything – until disability found me and slowed me down,” he said.
“Being within the organisation, it has helped me to understand even more the challenges that disabled persons have gone through. It takes one to be there to know what the individual had been encountering.”
Identified
He said the Into My World Programme that BARNOD had a few years ago encouraged people to take on a disability for a day, such as using a wheelchair, or being blindfolded or denied the use of their arms so they actually felt and identified with what the disabled go through all their lives.
A similar initiative called Walk A Mile In My Shoes will be held on March 25. (LK)
