The Kwahu Afram Plains South District Assembly has disbursed a total of Eighty Six Thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢86,000.00) to 26 Persons with Disability (PWD) within the district to empower them to undertake economic ventures that would sustain their lives.

This was disclose at a public forum organized for them by the District Disability Fund Management Committee (DFMC) in Tease during the Durbar.

The District Chief Executive, Hon. George Ofori in his address entreated the beneficiaries to try to invest the money into productive ventures to help uplift their standards of living and welfare.

He noted that the disbursement of the fund at the national level sometimes delayed and for that reason beneficiaries must make judicious use of the money and items given to them  since several others had also applied for the fund and would be considered the next time the releases were made available to the Assembly.

 He explained that one major requirement was that the applicant for the fund must be a disabled person and submitted an application detailing what he or she intended to use the money for and based on the convincing reasons stated the committee approved it

He stated that the purpose of the fund was to empower persons with disability economically to get them out of the street begging for arms which sometimes result in the loss of precious lives of some of them through accidents.

The Chairman of the Federation of Person with Disability, Mr. Commery Hanson Auther said the selection of beneficiaries was very transparent since they had used the prescribed guidelines to arrive at the decision as to who should benefit out of the numerous applications they received seeking for support from the fund. 

 He said as part of the District Disability Fund Management Committee’s responsibilities they would conduct regular monitoring to ensure that beneficiaries use the money for the purpose for which they were granted the fund.

He indicated that to ensure effective monitoring, beneficiaries must belong to one of the various disability groups in the municipality where they could easily be contacted to find out how they were utilizing the money to achieve the desired results. 

He said a major challenge to the committee was the lack of clarity in application letters sent to them by the disabled applicants seeking for support from the fund thereby making their work difficult to determine their needs.