Ensure education, employment for people with disabilities: Speakers
Rights activists at a programme called for taking necessary steps to ensure education and employment facilities for people with disabilities (PwDs), who comprise over 9% of the total population.
Most of the PwDs are poor and need support to improve their condition. Bangladesh would not be able to achieve the SDGs if they remain neglected, as SDGs mainly focused on leaving no one behind, they said at a seminar titled 'Marrakesh Treaty Accession Celebration and Way Forward' at the auditorium of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics at Agargaon in the capital.
Visually Impaired People's Society (VIPS) and Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) jointly organized the event on Saturday.
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All the structures and mass transports should also be made accessible for them to ensure their rights, they added.
Supreme Court lawyer Musherraf Hossain Mazumder, adviser of VIPS, said PwDs are now committing suicide due to unemployment. He urged authorities concerned to take necessary steps to solve the problem.
Saidul Huq, executive director of Blind Education and Rehabilitation Development Organisation (BERDO), underscored the need to build a rights-based, discrimination-free society that can ensure all people's rights.
In her speech, Shaheen Anam, executive director of Manusher Jonno Foundation, said that it is the constitutional duty of the State to uphold the rights of the backward section of society.
The event was told that Bangladesh had ratified the 'Marrakesh Treaty' of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to facilitate access to published works for the blind, visually impaired or people with print disabilities.
