Liberia’s female Legislators of the country’s 53rd Legislature are on a laudable mission: Advocating for legislative representation in the Legislature for Liberians with physical disabilities. They want persons from the country’s group of Persons With Disabilities (PWD) to occupy these seats.
This group of Representatives and Senators—led by Senator Jewel Howard-Taylor (Bong County) are united under the aegis Women Legislative Caucus (WLC). They had met leaderships of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), Leadership of the Ministry of Gender, Federation of Liberia Youth (FLY), Liberia National Students Union (LINSU), and civil society organizations to join WLC on pressing the male-dominated 5rd Legislature to pass a pro-PWD Bill (presented to the Legislature long time ago) into law.
Senator Taylor—a former First Lady of the Republic of Liberia—and her female colleagues think, with a body of PWDs in the Legislature, public roads will be re-structured to have a place for PWDs in wheelchairs or crutches to pass through with ease as it happens in other countries with ‘empathetic persons’ in leadership positions.
None of Liberia’s Heads of State, throughout the country’s 169 years of independent existence (up at 2015), had demonstrated empathy with Liberian citizens with physical disability by creating a space along a staircase in a public place (government building, street, etc) for our physically challenged compatriots to move with their wheelchairs or crutches.
Now, here is the fact that may shock you about these female Legislators-Advocates: None of them has a person with disability in her office staff.
I got this fact from Senator Jewel Howard Taylor’s response to my question during a Question/Comment session when the WLC’s delegation was at the Press Union Headquarters in July (2016) to present the Draft Bill to the Kamara Abdullai Kamara-led PUL leaders to rally Liberian journalists to push passage of the Bill into law.
This was my question to Senator Taylor and her entourage: “Which of you, female Legislators behind this pro-PWD Bill, has at least one person with disability employed in your office?”
Senator Taylor replied: “I should admit, that none of the female Legislators on this campaign has a person with disability employed in her office…but this is why we want you, Journalist, join us in pressing the government to pass this Bill so that their colleagues (PWD) can be Legislators and compel us (female Legislators) to employ their colleagues outside of government.”
What the Senior Bong County Lawmaker was implying is this: Until the PWD Bill is passed into law, we (female Legislators) fighting for their being directly represented in the Legislature won’t employ them. You, my fellow non-Legislator, may understand Senator Taylor’s comment differently.
Senator Taylor’s comment about not having as employees anybody from a group of disadvantaged persons they are advocating for reminds me of many Liberian ‘Advocates’ as Chief Executive Officers in the media sectors. One is popular female who gives extremely low salaries to her entity’s female employees but goes about criticizing her male colleagues (CEOs) on not employing women into their media entities.
The male CEOs often accuse non-media leaders (especially those in government) of exploiting ordinary citizens but keep their reporters without paying them over three months, or more.
Is this not hypocrisy—doing what you’re preaching against?
Liberians who are outside of the national ruling class or not in any leadership structure in the country often lambast those inside on failure of lifting others out destitution. I am one of the accusers!
The professional name for each of these criticizers is “Advocate”.
Here are some of the Advocates’ complaints: “This President isn’t developing the country’s health, educational and agricultural sectors…This Minister is employing only relatives…This Legislator is defending foreigners exploiting their Liberian employees…”
The accusers have used all popular channels available in the country: Newspapers, Radio Station, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and Intellectual Centers (also called ‘Talking Points’)
These complaints are patriotically genuine—or to me they are.
But there is a characteristic problem with majority of Liberia Advocates: They do not do ‘First Aid’ advocacy. For this, I am referring to the economically or financially privileged complaints.
Why I Am Campaigning For ‘First Aid’ Advocacy
I should first give the definition of ‘First Aid’ and my personal experience with the term.
Definition: First Aid means an emergency assistance a concerned person offers to another person in distress before the main help arrives.
My personal experience with First Aid was on Ghana’s refugee camp (1990-1994). I was a refugee and a volunteer worker with the refugee camp-based branch of the Ghana Red Cross Society (GRCS).
Besides being trained to construct homes for refugees, we, refugee Red Cross volunteers, were taught skills of saving persons who had drowned or involved in motor accidents. For drowning, we were instructed to blow air into the victim through his/her nostrils. Our teachers were Ghanaians from GRCS.
Our teachers often reminded us the First Aid methods could also be applied to other aspects of the lives of our ‘patients’—including ‘speaking’ to leaders on providing needs of life for those in the Vulnerable Bracket—as the Constitution or Social Contract demands from each ‘leader’.
Our Ghanaian teachers sometime told us that helping another person in problem creates a spiritual connection between the person offering the assistance and the person being assisted—and that spiritual connection creates empathy in the helper toward those desperately seeking help.
Twenty-six years later, this First Aid method of solving other people problems has been living in me in my native home: Liberia. And this has inspired me to offer academic services (writing of Employment Letter, editing of a news story on grammar or spellings, etc) free to young people and adults even when I do not have food money or transportation to meet somebody who had promised to give me some money survival.
Here Are ‘First Aid’ Advocacy Actions
I have a long list of ‘First Aid’ actions about education, agriculture, health, security, etc. for the transformation of our country, but I list three due to limited space in a journal this article would appear.
One ‘First Aid’ action is giving one doughnut and a cup of water each to a group of ten hungry persons before crying to the national government or a political leader to provide plates of cooked rice with sachet of purified water for the group.
Another ‘First Aid’ action is offering free teaching service to a group of poor people children in your community before crying to the national government or a political leader to build a school the community.
The third ‘First Aid’ action filling of sand into holes in a community’s public roads before crying to national government or political leader of that area to cover the holes with crushed rocks or another material.
Do your “little part” before you cry on the national government or the leader to do the “bigger part”.
This is ‘First Aid’ Advocacy.
About the Author:
Samuel G. Dweh, a product of ‘demonized’ West Point Township, is a journalist (with special interest in Education), publisher of Edu-Diary (education newspaper); creative writer; Author of an education novel titled GRADE SIN (and five other books of fiction), member of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), and member of the Liberia Association of Writers (LAW) – 886 618 906/ 776 583 266/[email protected]/Dweh4lib@gmailcom