BAGUIO CITY – The City Council approved a resolution requesting private and public institutions in the city offering basic education to strictly observe the non-discrimination of persons with disabilities (PWDs) and members of the different marginalized sectors.
The resolution states that considering Baguio city is an educational center of the north, students and pupils at their young age should be instilled with the needed respect on the rights of PWDs and other members of different marginalized sectors for them to learn to value their importance in the society, thus, the need for public and private institutions offering basic education to teach the children the proper values.
The resolution pointed out the school, whether private or public, primarily is a place for learning skills and knowledge on values and morals that help develop the character and personality of the youth.
Further, the resolution adds the school is a venue where rights are learned and applied, where discrimination of members of different sectors should be prohibited based on the norms of the society as enshrined in local laws and the United Nations Convection on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
According to the approved resolution, the implementing rules and regulations of the Magna Carta for PWDs, particularly Section 7, Chapter I, Rule V, prohibits ‘ public ridicule or the act of making fun or contemptuous imitating or making mockery of persons with disabilities whether in writing or in words, or in actions due to their impairments.’
The resolution stipulates Section 8 of the same rules prohibits vilification or the utterance of slanderous and abusive statements against persons with disability by calling persons by their disability in public which results to humiliation or by using the disability of a person as an example in a manner that is embarrassing and humiliating to the dignity of persons with disabilities.
It has been observed young children often make fun of PWDs to the extent they call them by their disability that tend to humiliate the said persons possessing such disability considering that they are not yet aware of the provisions of existing laws related thereto or that they were not properly taught by their parents or guardians to give due respect to the said individuals having defects on their physical features among others.
The resolution underscored the proper education of pupils on according due respect to persons with disabilities who deserve to be treated fairly in the society with the similar rights coupled with special privileges to be accorded to them in recognition of the different disabilities that they possess.
Concerned government agencies and local government units have numerous programs and projects towards uplifting the status of the persons with disabilities in the society as these persons also contribute to the development and welfare of their communities and are productive in their own right.
By Dexter A. See