HEARING-IMPAIRED WANT TRUST FUND DISSOLVED
THEZambia Deaf Youth and Women (ZDYW) has petitioned President Edgar Lungu to dissolve the National Trust Fund for Persons with Disabilities (NTFPD) on grounds that it has failed to empower persons with disabilities.
Additionally, the NTFPD has been accused of failing to provide microfinance and skills that were important to economic sustainability and independent living.
ZDYW Executive Director, Frankson Musukwa, said the NTFPD had proven to be a burden and a waste of public resources that were not reaching the intended beneficiaries.
She was speaking in an interview in Kitwe.
Mr Musukwa also requested the Head of State to engage the office of the Auditor General to audit how the funds were being used to advance the objectives stipulated in the Persons with Disabilities Act No. 6 of 2012 part 7 section 55.
The NTFPD was established under the repealed persons with disabilities act No. 6 of 2021 part VII (55).
“The poverty level among the people living with disabilities is a time bomb for government and call for urgent and radical measures because the institutions entrusted with the responsibility and mandate to implement government policy has failed lamentably.
“Deaf members of the organization and other persons living with disabilities had applied for loans from the Trust in 2010 and later again in 2012 but it was only last year when they resurfaced from field appraisal and financial training for applicants,” he said.
Mr Musukwa added that persons with disabilities who applied were promised that they would be given loans amounting to K 2,500 early in January this year, but efforts to contact officers responsible had proved futile.
He said while Government had come up with a lot of empowerment initiatives, persons living with disabilities had not benefited from any of them.
He therefore appealed to Government to come up with initiatives tailored for the benefit of persons with disabilities on the Copperbelt that will continue to alleviate poverty and economic empowerments.