Persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Kisumu County have expressed their disappointment with the budgetary allocations for their programmes.
Despite the amount for one of the programmes rising by a million shillings, the PWDs accused the county government of not giving what they want implemented a priority.
Women, youth and persons with disabilities were collectively allocated in the budget, Sh160 million for their development programmes in the financial year 2015/2016.
The women, youth and persons with disability fund got the largest share of Sh100 million. Other sub-programmes such as gender mainstreaming got Sh6 million up from last year’s Sh5 million, while child protection development was allocated Sh5 million.
The county has also set aside Sh4 million each under the same category of gender, youth empowerment and social development for disability mainstreaming, assistance to the elderly and vulnerable and National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
The disability policy was given Sh2 million, social protection policy the same amount while child care and protection policy was allocated Sh3 million. Civic education under the same category is to cost the county Sh7 million in this financial year.
However, persons with disabilities are not happy with the allocation terming it little and one that is not backed by statistics.
Kisumu Action Disability Development Network (KADDN) Director Walter Ondwat said the county government does not have the exact number of PWDs in the region thus giving out less amount that may not benefit a good number of them.
“As persons with disability, we should be allocated five per cent of the county’s Sh8.2 billion budget, this is not the case,” claimed Ondwat.
He accused the county government of not involving them in the early stages of the budget process, claiming they were ambushed to discuss a hundred-page document on a short notice.
The KADDN Director said the budget should have touched on pertinent issues to them such as assistive devices, economic empowerment and facilitation of education for children with disabilities through education programmes.