National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU), East Africa Centre for Disability Law and Policy (CDLP) and Uganda Media Women’s Association (UMWA) have urged parents to include Persons with Disabilities in the upcoming national population census which is scheduled to begin on 10th of May 2024.
Esther Kyozira, Chief Executive Officer, National Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda (NUDIPU) called upon community leaders to work together with the leaders of persons with disabilities to mobilize persons with disabilities to be counted.
“We call upon parents, care givers and guardians of persons with disabilities to avail persons with disabilities for counting come 10th of May 2024. Kindly desist from the habit of hiding persons with disabilities,”Kyozira said.
” We call upon leaders of persons with disabilities at national and district level to mobilize persons with disabilities to be counted,”she added.
After every 10 years, Uganda holds a national census and the last one was conducted in 2014.
The census comes at a right time when Uganda is grappling with the challenge of disaggregated data on persons with disabilities. This is evident with the 2016 Concluding Observations to Uganda by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities when it recommended to Uganda for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of disaggregated data about persons with disabilities and the barriers that they face.
According to UBOS, the census figures will play a critical role in guiding planning, policy formulation, and programme implementation as well as monitoring development progress in line with the national goals and objectives.
“We recognize government efforts on the collection of disability disaggregated data and we want to thank the Government of Uganda and more so Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) for working collaboratively with NUDIPU and the Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) together with the National Council for Persons with Disabilities and Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to making sure that the National Population Census tool reflects various disability categories. This is a good step to making sure that all Persons with Disabilities are counted and are not left behind,”
Esther Kyozira, Chief Executive Officer, National Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda (NUDIPU) said.
The 2014 population census report reported Persons with Disabilities to be 12.4% of the total population. It is highly anticipated that this number is going to increase due to many causes of disability including but not limited to accidents which have made many people become disabled.
To realize the effective counting of persons with disabilities in the upcoming national population census, Esther Kyozira, Chief Executive Officer, National Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda (NUDIPU) called all upon all persons with disabilities in the country to be readily available for the upcoming national census.
