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{
    "id": 964051,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/964051/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 348,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "sympathetic point of view, to a human rights point of view. Before, it was about treatment and about people who cannot do anything. If you look at the International Convention on Persons living with Disability, we were a signatory to it, as a country. That regime changed. We stopped looking at them as people to be given a hand up, to people with equalization of opportunities. These are people with whom we are in a regime where we go out of our way to make sure that we can equalize their access economically, socially and even politically. We look at them that they too can contribute to the wellbeing of our country, to the success of our economy and to the society at large. That is the aspect. Madam Temporary Speaker, all of us have a disability. The built environment is designed to overcome our inherent shortcomings, as human beings. My office is on the 26th floor of the Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC). If there was no lift or stairs, I also cannot go up to the 26th floor. However, because I can at least walk, we need to provide extra for the one who needs a ramp or who needs to make sure that the lift is working. It was very embarrassing in the last Parliament that even within Parliament buildings, the first time we realized that we had an access problem was when one of our colleagues in the House Business Committee (HBC) in the National Assembly got an accident and got disabled. That is when we realized that there are Kenyans who cannot access just the first floor of Parliament. That change in mindset is what is important. Sen. (Dr.) Musuruve, the more you bring such Motions, the more you make sure that we have these discussions, then the more you begin demystifying and debunking the myth that has always surrounded this sector of millions of Kenyans and people on this continent, who are living with disability. That is the attitude we must look at; it is a right. Madam Temporary Speaker, Sen. (Dr.) Musuruve has attended the Convention in Geneva. I have also gone there to represent this country before. Kenya is lauded out there as a country that has moved forward, and we keep to most of our commitments. However, locally, we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to the recognition of PWDs. Today, in my County of Nairobi City, it is very sad that everyday there are very many mothers – I know that they do not like it, as well – who, in the morning, because they have a child with disability or a child who possibly has a mental health problem or a physical disability, are locked up in their houses because the mother cannot afford to take care for that child. The mother needs to go out and eke a living. You might find that the ladies who come to wash your houses or the ladies who are sitting out there, waiting for a job, have left a child out there. We started a programme where we go round picking these children. I am glad that the President was able to help us, and we now have a bus that we are using with some of the children’s homes. We go and pick those children in the morning, and we bring them back in the evening. If you listen to the kind of work coming out of those children – their expression, art and intelligence – it is a shame that too many are wasting away. That is the first aspect that I wanted to point out; that we must change our attitude towards this great part of our populace."
}