People faking disabilities have nowhere to hide.
This follows the rollout of fresh registration targeting the introduction of disability cards with enhanced security features.
The National Council for Persons with Disabilities has since rolled out training for health workers charged with responsibility of assessing disabilities.
The exercise is part of standardization of the assessments across the country.
Once those living with disability are assessed and registered afresh, they will be issued with the smart cards.
Friendly system
Harrun Hassan, the CEO of the Council has noted that the old system was prone to compromise by people faking disability.
But the new system will be user friendly.
“The earlier process was tough and hectic. People used to travel all the way from different parts of the county to follow up their registration status in Nairobi,” said Hassan.
The fresh registration is in line with the presidential directive to weed out fraudsters from the PWDs register.
The earlier process was tough and hectic. People used to travel all the way from different parts of the county to follow up their registration status in Nairobi
Harrun Hassan
Hassan said once the new registration is complete, the old card will be declared redundant.
According to Hassan, there are 530,000 PWDs in the country.
The 2019 Census however puts the number at about one million.
“We are working with Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and very soon we are going to do a baseline survey to either validate or invalidate those figures,” added Hassan.
Ministry of Health
Douglas Kotut who represented the Ministry of Health said the ministry was responsible for the ongoing training.
The training has brought together specialists from physical disabilities, psychiatrist, ophthalmologists and audiologist.
The MoH disability assessment and categorization guidelines have adopted a globally accepted mode called International Classification of Function( ICF) that looks into issues of impairments and environmental and personal factors.
“We are not only looking at the impairment of the person, we are also bringing in the element of environmental factors and personal factors which when brought together contribute to disability,” he said.