By Moses M. Tokpah, mosesmtokpah@gmail.com
KAKATA, Liberia- A visually impaired organization under the banner “Liberia Christian Association of the Blind Inc. (CAB)” in Kakata, Margibi County has decried the lack of support. amid the Coronavirus pandemic.
The general secretary of the Margibi branch of the Liberia Christian Association of the Blind Inc, J. Moses Kpaklah recently told www.newspublictrust.com in Margibi that the group is not getting the needed support to cater for its hundreds of members.
Mr. Kpaklah spoke of many challenges facing people who are visually impaired, ranging from the lack of empowerment, the lack of access to education, employment, good health, safe drinking water and electricity among others, indicating that those in the County are of no exception.
The Blind are also in desperate need of latrine facilities, even pit latrine as well as health care.
According to the head of the Margibi branch of CAB, about eighty to ninety percent of his members live on handouts, meaning that they go out in the street asking other humanitarian and petit-traders for little money to get their daily bread.
He noted that the stay home order is posing serious pressure on the organization, because petit traders whom their colleagues go to in the streets for help are finding it difficult to take their goods to the market.
“You realize that many of our colleagues go to bed without food and the call is just coming, what’s going on to the office; and their hope at the office here is so high and we cannot able to just respond to some of these calls,” he said.
Mr. Kpaklah asserted that what the group has been receiving from the different groups and individuals, especially in the wake of the ongoing health crisis is just a drop in the bucket.
He explained that since the outbreak of the COVID-19; support to the group has been on a minimum skill, pointing out that 85% of the organization’s active members cut across the five electoral districts of Margibi County. And all of those members go to the Kakata office for little assistance from some humanitarian and other state actors.
Mr. Kpaklah is at the same time appealing to the government of Liberia as well as local and international organizations to provide some basic needs for the Blind association, including desktop and laptop computers and life skills, in addition to food and other basic needs.