THE Government has assured the Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ZAPD) that it will address their concerns over challenges they will encounter under the free education policy.
Community Development and Social Services Minister Doreen Mwamba said this in response to ZAPD Copperbelt coordinator Anthony Mwansa who informed her that her members would not fully benefit from free education as only few public schools offered special education, mainly private schools and those managed by the Church.
This was after Ms Mwamba visited Kangonga Center for physically challenged people in Ndola on Tuesday, where Mr Mwansa said that there were inadequate services available to pupils with physical challenges to match the requirements.
Mr Mwansa proposed that the free education policy should offer educational services appropriate to the needs of children with physical challenges, particularly in early intervention and early childhood education.
“In the education and health we are having some challenges for example the free education, most of special schools for children with disabilities are not Government schools they are mission and private schools and the policy for example on the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is that the grant for bursaries will only go to secondary schools, but we have children in primary schools who are not benefiting from this,” he said.
Mr Mwansa called for collaborative service provision in supporting students and to work on the gaps in the sector that hindered easy access to access free education.
In response, Ms Mwamba assured Mr Mwansa that her office would engage other ministries and see how best the issue could be handled.
“The aim is to serve our people better and provide all the necessary services that we promised to be provided so your observation is well taken and that is why we are here, we are here to monitor and evaluate, we are here to get feedback from you the people on where you want us to improve and what services you want us to provide,” she said.