Poverty and Disability in Uganda 2: Employment and Marginalization

This is the second part of a series of blog posts examining the experiences of persons with disabilities (PWDs) living with poverty in Uganda. The blog post Poverty and Disability in Uganda 1: Definitions presented definitions of disability and poverty. This post begins to investigate the complex interactions that link chronic poverty and disability. The basis for this investigation is the 2003 report Chronic Poverty and Disability in Uganda which is a qualitative study that discusses the experiences of PWDs and their carers in Uganda. 

This blog post begins by looking at one of the major drivers of chronic poverty, employment; then looks at exclusion and isolation. Other drivers of chronic poverty and disability will be discussed in subsequent posts. What work activities do PWDs do?

Overall, the respondents that the research team talked to in Kampala and the rural districts observed that the type of activities that disabled people carry out in pursuit of their livelihoods differ for urban and rural areas and between men and women. They also differ depending on the nature of disability that a person faces. In the majority of cases, however, the activities were closely related to what able-bodied persons do in similar geographical areas, although it should be added that involvement often tended to be at the marginal ends of the activities in question. In some communities where the growing of grains was pronounced, such as in Iganga for example, disabled people were sometimes confined to “keep birds away from eating seeds put out for drying”. Similarly, in urban areas a number of “disabled entrepreneurs” stopped at repairing shoes at street corners. Table 1 below summarises the activities that disabled persons carry out, as recorded by the research team.

Table 1: Activities carried out by disabled persons

Nature of disability	Urban (Kampala)		Rural (Mbarara, Mukono and Iganga)
	Male	Female	Male	Female
Blind	-Begging -Switchboard operator	-Petty Trade -Handouts	-Agriculture -Crafts making	-Agriculture -Handouts
Deaf	-Carpentry	-Left at home	-Casual Labour	-Left at home
Physically Handicapped	-Petty trade -Shoe making/ repair -Welding -Carpentry -Begging	-Tailoring -Home/roadside selling -Hand crafts	-Agriculture	-Agriculture -Petty trade -Hand crafts

Many PWDs experience discrimination. An important thread in the study was the experience of marginalisation. The study continues:

Exclusion, isolation and neglect were observed to be among the leading causes of marginalisation, failure to access resources, and hence chronic poverty among disabled people. There is fundamental ignorance around disability at all levels of society. In Mukono and Iganga witchcraft was blamed, especially if mental illness was involved, in which case individuals and their families were likely to be rejected by both their families and by communities. Widespread fear of disability, especially of mentally ill individuals, is based on a common perception that disability and mental illness are contagious. The perception is even more deep-rooted for epilepsy. Evidence from Mulago in Kampala revealed that even within the medical profession, disability is given little time in training and negligible allocation of resources hence ignorance is very widespread outside of the tiny number of people that are trained specifically in this area. Approaches that are used by traditional practitioners in dealing with disability follow the “curative medical model”, but often lend themselves to physical and sexual abuse in “treatment”. Awareness raising appears to be an urgent need for all community members and professionals.
(a) Attitude-based exclusion: Exclusion was noted to happen in three different ways: economic, social and political. Economically, exclusion centred around obstacles to participation in livelihood activities, especially those of an income generation nature. Access to financial resources was noted to be a major factor in this regard. While there was no evidence of official policy by financial institutions to exclude disabled people from accessing loans, most disabled were on record for having been denied credit facilities in nearly all such financial institutions “simply because managers thought they had no ability to pay back”. People with disabilities were excluded from joining credit groups by able-bodied group members. In such instances members of the groups feared that if allowed disabled people would never be able to pay back their loans. In one instance, in Iganga, this left only the specifically designed ADD-IDIWA Income Generation programme to serve disabled persons. But income generation opportunities were not the only challenge. The majority of disabled people interviewed by the research team in rural areas themselves seemed to prefer being given grants to obtaining loans. The preference is in conformity with the age-old practice of seeking for handouts.
At the community level, also, attitude-based exclusion remains a major problem. In Bwaise a disabled food vendor who moves on her fours revealed that she could not compete with other women as some customers referred to her as “dirty” (because she has to crawl on the ground to move from one place to another.).
There were, however, other challenges too. Disabled people meet high levels of overheads whenever they try to engage in income generating activities.

“The physical facilities in markets are not conducive to disabled people’s work. In order, for example, to be able to make bulk purchases from the market a disabled person needs to take along with him/her an assistant, which increases the operating costs for disabled persons”. - Disabled workers, Bwaise-Mulago, Kampala
“When I need to travel, I will have to put into consideration the cost of transporting my wheelchair. Often taxi drivers will reject this, citing lack of space”. - Disabled person in Iganga
“We work in direct competition with able-bodied colleagues who are also involved in informal trade activities. Whenever, however, Law Enforcement Officers make a raid on informal sector workers, everyone else runs off and saves their wares, except disabled persons who are unable to run”. - Disabled informal sector workers from Bwaise-Mulago.

But negative attitudes are not confined to simple exclusion of disabled people from participating in economic activities. In certain instances it was clear that able-bodied community members “sympathised with the condition of disabled persons” to the extent that they “pitifully excluded” them. Evidence from Nkokonjeru Providence Home in Mukono revealed that community members who live around the home complained of disabled children being involved in agriculture as part of their routine schedules. To the majority of such people disabled children should never, in the first place, have been “subjected to hard tasks” such as agriculture. The story from the disabled children themselves was however quite different:

“By participating in agriculture we have shown the world that we are able to do things by ourselves” - Disabled Children at Nkokonjeru Providence Home
“Growing crops and doing work towards personal livelihood has been an empowering process for us." - Disabled Children at Nkokonjeru Providence Home

A common problem expressed by respondents in nearly all districts was the inappropriateness and lack of access of information on agriculture, especially that which comes via radio waves. Disabled farmers in Mbarara complained about not getting information on agricultural development projects, such as that on availability of clonal coffee seedlings. First, certain categories of disabled people, specifically deaf persons, simply cannot access such information. Yet even in instances where information is available the content of the messages assumes that users (the farmers themselves) are all able-bodied and hence the examples given can only be used by able-bodied persons. Other disabled persons are themselves so poor that they cannot afford a radio, and hence cannot benefit from radio messages. It was further remarked that agricultural extension services only go to those that can afford them, completely leaving out disabled farmers who are often struggling to get started. Further, there were complaints about agricultural practices not being adapted so as to fit the needs of particular people with disabilities. Similarly, disabled people in Gamba, Mukono wondered why no Government agency had ever conceived a type of agriculture that is suitable for people with disabilities, and which took account of the different disabilities.

Uganda, city Kampala, a mentally handicapped
child is all alone in the shadow of his home.
His parents are so poor that they have to
 work and have no time to care for the boy.

 (b) Social exclusion Evidence on this took different forms. Disabled children, it was noted, were rarely given an opportunity to go to school, hence their socialisation was limited at an early stage. Reasons for this varied considerably. In a few instances, such as in Namulesa, Mukono, some parents “felt ashamed” to show their disabled children. In other instances children taken to schools also found little or nothing to do there as schools lacked trained teachers, appropriate equipment or the disabled children even met with outright negative reactions from other children. This discouraged them (the disabled children) from participating in school activities.

In Ibanda and Iganga children with disabilities could not easily access education because schools were at least 5km away from home and parents were unable to pay the requisite transport money. Some children also lacked mobility appliances. However another limitation were the unusually high fees at special needs schools, such as Mbarara, which charges Shs. 40,000/- per term in fees, 38 kg of maize flour and 8kg of beans as opposed to between 8000/- and 21000/= in UPE schools. In Ntinda school of disabled school fees is 80000/= per term. Failure to benefit from educational opportunities condemned disabled children to perpetual poverty. To many parents of disabled children, therefore, their children’s disability was quite expensive.
The architecture in most schools continues to be a major physical barrier to participation of disabled children in education. In Wandegeya Muslim School, for example, disabled children supported by Salvation Army cannot be promoted to higher forms simply because upper classes are physically located “upstairs”. Similarly, deaf and blind children are sometimes excluded from enrolling in UPE Schools because teachers lack the necessary skills to teach. In all districts visited, these children are not enrolled at all.
Involuntary exclusion was also noted with some special categories of children. In Ibanda (Mbarara), Nalukolongo (Kampala) and Nkokonjeru (Mukono) children suffering from Ostomolisis and epilepsy were kept at home “to avoid them getting problems while at school”. Regrettably, when such children are kept away from school no compensatory lessons are held for them.
Other types of exclusion are not so easy to note. Children with motor neuron challenges, children that are blind or those that are deaf cannot sit the same types of examinations as do other children. Similarly, in instances where concepts have to be translated into sign language the mode in which such translation is done, including time that is allocated to perform tasks, need to vary. But perhaps the greatest obstacle to further education of disabled children is the stereotyping of children with disabilities as best only for “vocational skills” - shoe making, carpentry, tailoring, etc.
Disabled teenagers on the other hand, especially as they explore and discover their sexuality, find it extremely difficult to find boyfriends or girlfriends, which in turn makes them vulnerable to “any willing sexual partners”, sometimes carrying with them the risk of HIV/AIDS. Several reports, however, also mentioned men who only want to “explore” the sexuality of a disabled person but have no intention of entering into long-term relationships. Adult disabled persons, also, neither had genuine friendships nor fully participated in social activities.
Exclusion from health services was noted to be a widespread problem in nearly all the research districts. While overall disabled people believed that the quality of health service delivery to disabled persons had generally improved in the last years, cases of alienation from the service were still many. In Iganga a case was mentioned of blind persons being skipped “because they had not come with proper guides” (apparent reference to corruption money). Distance was also a critical factor, with journeys being as long as 2-5 kms. This problem aside disabled people even when they turned up at local dispensaries with certain ailments were automatically referred to bigger hospitals as at the lower levels staff were unsure how to handle disabled persons.
On the other hand the research team observed that most health facilities lacked specialised health personnel such as ENT clinical officers or psychiatric nurses (Kamwokya) which sometimes led to aggravation of the disability conditions of some people. The priority given to specialist psychiatric drugs was also noted to be very low with only drugs for well-known illnesses such as Malaria being put on the purchase list of essential drugs. As a consequence many children with disabilities in Mukono and Ibanda were either being given local herbs, or taken to traditional healers.
Most disabled women were observed to be particularly vulnerable because:

• They lack permanent marriage partners
• They are unable to defend themselves in case they are attacked sometimes raped.
• They may themselves be seeking to have a child at any cost and with anybody able and willing to father the child.
• They are unable to make firm decisions on matters of sexuality due to powerlessness resulting from various forms of social discrimination
• Many are made to believe that they are “simply being helped to satisfy their sexual desires”.
• Communication materials that are prepared on important health messages such as HIV/AIDS are either inaccessible or the mode in which they are transmitted unfriendly.
• They lack sensitisation on reproductive issues

The implications of social exclusion ranged from missed opportunities in education, to seclusion and non-participation in development activities. Many disabled persons also missed out on development-oriented information in health, governance, etc. which further marginalized them from participation in mainstream activities.

PWDs experience poverty for many reasons. Employment is in marginal and unskilled work. Common ways of earning money were begging and handouts, some PWDs were left at home. This was contrasted with the issues of marginalisation and exclusion that PWDs are commonly subjected to. 

The following article, No borders: Hiring the disabled can still get you results, discusses the experiences of the hearing impaired. Of particular note is the use of the derogatory "deaf and dumb" to describe the hearing impaired in this report:

Like any other Ugandans, the skills, experience and educational qualifications of the deaf and dumb are widely varied, but they tend to be an under-utilised talent pool.
If companies look beyond someone’s disability and seize the potential of everyone who wants to work for them, they could benefit immensely.
A recent report from the International Labour Organisation: Disabled persons and employment, indicates that disabled persons comprise of more than 600 million of the seven billion people that make the global population.
“While many disabled persons are successfully employed and fully included in society, as a group, they face disproportionate poverty and severe unemployment,” the report reads in part.
“A lack of global data about their numbers and situation is only one piece of evidence supporting the discrimination and exclusion they often face. National data, when it exists, verifies the fact that people with disabilities, and especially women, are less likely to access education, training and employment of any kind.”
Some companies in Uganda are adopting employment of disabled persons in their policies.
“We strongly adhere to our human resource policy that does not discriminate against job seekers and employees on any grounds. We believe that including people with physical impairment in our workforce increases our pool of talent and skill,” Ms Brenda Kyasiimire, the human resource manager at Rwenzori Bottling Company Limited, says.
Recognised: Ms Barbra Gwosusa and MsFlorence Aguti have not had a fair share of life because both are deaf and dumb.
It is with their current job placements at Rwenzori Bottling that they are starting to realise their worth.
Ms Aguti studied in Arua District but later moved to Jinja District where she studied a tailoring course.
Tailoring was not earning her enough money to buy “beautiful shoes and jewelry” as the 29-year-old says through an interpreter Isaac Lukyamuzi. She later joined the teaching profession at Gayaza School for the Deaf tutoring primary one and two in sign language.
However, she did not give up on the job search. She applied for a vacancy at the company last September and luckily there was a vacancy that she is currently filling.
“My life is better now because of the good working conditions and relations I have with other employees. Everyone loves and cares for us,” Ms Aguti says. “I am more confident now and have realised that I can do anything that a normal person can do or even better.”
For the future, Ms Aguti dreams of meeting a good man who will love her for who she is.
Bitter side: Her colleague Ms Gwosusa has tasted the bitter side of being employed with a disability.
She studied in Ntinda School for the Deaf. However, she did not go beyond Senior Four because of school fees constraints. She was previously working as a caterer in a hotel in Wandegeya but could not stomach the oppression she was facing from some of her workmates and the Shs60,000 per month was so meagre.
“I was reduced to rubbish in that place. No one believed in me not even the managers,” she said, engrossed in deep thought.
She threw in the towel early this year and a visit to her former school cast good luck upon her.
It is her former headteacher in Ntinda who told her about the openings at Rwenzori.
“My mother passed on when I was still very young. I am thankful to God that I can now look after myself. I am no longer a burden to my father, who also hardly manages on his own,” says the 29-year-old whose dream is to board a plane and become a manager at the company.
“I am glad that I took on these people in my department because they are my best employees. They are diligent and hardworking,” Mr Innocent Obong, the quality manager at Rwenzori says, lashing at those who look at employing the deaf in bad light.

This survey of disability and poverty in Uganda discussed the employment of PWDs. Besides the begging, handouts and being left at home being, it is also noted that most work available to PWDs is unskilled manual labour. PWDs also commonly face discrimination that leads to isolation and neglect. It was shocking as to read about attitudes of stigma and prejudice that have been discussed many times in this blog. Stigma and prejudice are feeding into chronic poverty through discrimination and are compounding the already precarious position of PWDs. Perhaps these barriers are greater than the problems of disability?