Inclusive education crucial for development
Chairperson of special needs students at University of Malawi’s Chancellor College, Dalitso Gumbila, has said inclusive education is an asset that gives a chance to people living with physical challenges to acquire quality education with relative ease.
Gumbila made the observation on Tuesday at Police Secondary School in Zomba which the students—with technical support from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa)—visited to build capacity for secondary school students on the significance of recognising people with physical challenges.
Inclusive education is a learning process that guarantees that learning institutions have enough teaching and learning materials suitable for the learners with physical challenges with their counterparts.
Gumbila said most of the country’s academic institutions that claim to be disability-friendly lack various facilities and materials like Braille, large print books, toilets as well as pavements for the concerned learners to use within their campuses.
He said due to the lack of the cited materials, most learners with physical challenges drop out of school to beg for alms where the majority of them are abused and harassed.
“We urge government and other development partners to treat inclusive education with diligence if dependency syndrome among the physically challenged persons is to be eliminated,” he said.
Chanco’s disability rights lecturer Dr.Enock Chilemba urged the students to start recognising and respecting human rights of people living with physical challenges as every person has the potential to contribute to the development of the country.
A Form Three student at the school Patrick Mkwapatira defined the visit of the university students as crucial as it had oriented them to the essence of treating each other impartially at a tender age.
