CEPD boss applauds government for employing PWDs as toll booth workers
News of toll booth services suspended came to us abruptly, CEPD boss
The Executive Director of the Center for Employment of Persons with Disabilities (CEPD), Alex Tetteh, has said that his colleagues who were working in the various toll booths scattered across the country until the time all such services were suspended, are yet to be paid for the period they worked.
He explained that for a period of two months, his colleagues did not get paid and that situation has persisted till now.
He added that the way many of them were sent home was so abrupt and has left many devastated.
“Now, aside the fact that there should be some package to get them home until they are recalled, their labour – they worked for two months before they were told to go home. These two months’ salaries, as we speak, they haven’t been paid, so that is the situation,” he said.
Alex Tetteh however said that many people living with disabilities had benefited from an initiative by the government to ensure that majority of them work as toll booth workers.
“Quite recent issue which has to do with toll workers – disabled persons who are collecting toll on our roads, I mean we were just sitting in our corner, a minister was being vetted and he said, ‘when I come, 50 percent of all the toll workers are going to be persons with disabilities.’
“Of course, when he came, he implemented it – we couldn’t get to the 50% but we were close to getting it and we were pushing and all of a sudden, one day we just heard the news that the toll booths has been suspended and so all the workers should go back home and there was no strategy; there was no plan. They just went home,” he added.
He made this known during a stakeholders’ workshop on the poor representation of Persons living With Disabilities (PWDs) on the labour market organized by Extra Helping Hands Foundation (EHHF) in collaboration with the CEPD.
