The Ghana Blind Union (GBU) on Friday appealed to government to provide senior high second-year blind students in the Gold Track with personal protective equipment to curb the spread of COVID-19.
"GBU has noted with interest that all senior high second year blind students are in the Gold track. Consequently, they are to report to school on the 22nd June, 2020,” it said.
Additionally, final year JHS blind students will report on June 29.
“GBU wishes to highlight some concerns and appeal to the Government to ensure that blind students are provided with extra safety kits of face masks and hand sanitizers," a statement signed by Mr Peter Obeng Asamoa, GBU Executive Director, and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Friday, said.
It said because blind students did a lot of touching for the sake of mobility and identification of objects the availability of the PPE was crucial.
"To navigate indoors, a blind person is likely to touch furniture and objects than his or her sighted counterpart,” the statement said.
“Again, when walking, blind persons who need guides are likely to hold on to their sighted guides.”
"The implication here is, the blind person is to ensure sanitation of his hands as well as his or her guide. Both situations require more use of hand sanitizer."
With respect to E-Learning, the Union drew government’s attention to the need to focus on upgrading blind persons in information and communication technology (ICT) skills so they were not left behind in the process.
It noted that most blind persons did not have adequate ICT equipment. It, therefore, tasked government to provide all blind students with personal laptops to enable them to take part in the entire educational process.
The GBU called on school authorities to provide conducive environment to aid the general mobility of blind students.
It said technically, each blind person should have a white cane, but not all could afford and appealed to government to provide white canes to all blind students.
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