Disabled community praises 2017 Census inclusion
With the 2017 Census findings soon to be released, a member from the Psychiatric Survivors Association said the inclusion of data on persons with disabilities is vital to the community. This is the very first time the census would include in-depth information on persons living with disabilities.
“I think that is very, very important because it’s never been done like that before,” Psychiatric Survivors Association community liaison officer, Vereniki Mataka said. “And people are more aware now that we are just a part of them.”
Mr Mataka said he hopes the census data would help remind the wider society that persons with disabilities like to be “treated as human beings”. Transgender and deaf human rights advocate, Eve Naqio, also believes that new data will contribute towards increasing services and advocacy for persons with disabilities. “I think that was a big milestone for us this year because data has always been a problem,” she said.
“There is a growing number of people with disabilities and in fact we need help with our advocacy and services.”
The Fiji Bureau of Statistics (FBS) confirmed the 2017 census data would provide first-time information on national figures on persons with disabilities, types of disabilities, and the breakdown in age, gender, ethnicity and province as well as levels of education and employment.
“In the last census, it was only asked at a household level – we just asked if there was anyone with a disability and it was either a yes or no,” FBS senior statistician, Emali Soderberg said.
“This time around we asked everyone in the household whether they had any difficulties with seeing, hearing, self-caring, walking and so on.”
Ms Soderberg said the new census findings would help the community and Government act on issues faced by those with disabilities.
“This will be good for policy planning because it will find out the people with functioning challenges by sex, by age – this is a first time for Fiji,” she said.
“The Government will be aware of who in the community has a functioning challenge and will be able to act on the census data.”
Ms Soderberg said the 2017 census findings are expected to be released by the end of this month.