Fifty-year old Abu Bakarr Koroma almost gave up collecting his national ID from the National Civil Registration Authority’s head office.

He had gone there to get the national ID but needed to make certain corrections on his name which had been wrongly spelt during the 2017 biometric voter registration, part of the data the civil registration uses to verify registrants before issuing them the card.
His first two names Abu Bakarr had been joined as a compound name. He wanted them separated before collecting the ID.

Mr. Koroma is a polio victim, suffering from a disabling disease caused by poliovirus that mainly affects people at an early, mostly under 5 years of age, according to WHO. He carries two clutches which he relies on to make movement from one place to another. Koroma’s inability to easily climb the steps of any long story building is palpable.

He falls under a minority group known as Persons with disabilities (PWDs), a group which according to UN, include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

The group forms 1.3 percent of the total population of Sierra Leone based on UNFPA’s analysis of the 2015 population census.

Because of this physical condition, Mr. Koroma did not expect correcting his identity data at the Civil Registration office would require him to move from the bottom to the top floor of the office.
However, having waited for hours at the bottom floor, the polio victim said he was told to climb to the general Manager’s office if he needed to make any changes on his personal information.

“It was during the rainy season and the steps were naked and slippery, he recalled his struggle to NCRAs General Manager’s office. “At one point, I almost fell. It was very-very much challenging for me.”

The National Civil Registration Authority {NCRA} headquarter where the polio victim had gone to get his identity card is a three-story building with its step hanging outside, high above the porch floor. The building has no elevator and its step no proper handrail, making it challenging for people like Mr. Koroma to climb any of the floors of the building.

“They would not have allowed me to climb that step. They would have taken an affirmative action and found a way to attend to me down stairs.”

“I believe this is what all other disable people encounter. I’m sure that barrier is part of the reasons why most persons with disability have not collected the ID.”

Accessibility and low sensitization

In a separate interview at a later date, another person living with disability, Momoh Mansaray would tell me NCRA actually has a staff assigned to attend to persons living with disabilities whenever any of them visits their office, but many of his colleagues don’t know. Lack of sensitization is where the problem lies, Mansaray said.

Further interaction with more persons living with disabilities reveals the group is predominantly represented among the high number Sierra Leoneans who have not collected their national ID. Lack of finance to pay for the ID and fear of stigma or other obstacles they might face in the process of getting the identity are among the reasons fueling the low demand of the ID among persons living with disabilities.

For instance, Mariatu Kargbo, another polio victim told Concord Times she’s aware of the importance of the ID, but she hasn’t collected it for two reasons: “First of all, I don’t have the money and secondly, when I see NCRA’s step I’m afraid of climbing it.”

She and others are gripped with the fear that NCRA’s headquarter is the only center to collect the ID and accessing the card will require everyone to climb the top floor of the three-story building.
Lack of information on the ID system is one key factor aiding its low demand among persons living with disabilities. If any sensitization has been done on how persons with disabilities can access the national ID, then it’s absolutely not enough.

“I can tell you emphatically that many of us persons living with disabilities have not collected the ID. If I can grade, about 90 percent of us have not collected it,” says Mr. Koroma who happens to be the National Secretary General for the Sierra Leone Union of Persons on Disabilities Issues or SLUDI.
He said part of the things responsible for that have to do with affordability and accessibility and lack of knowledge about the ID system. He explained that they all have peculiar needs when it comes to absorbing public information, and those needs have not been targeted in the information put out to sensitize the public about the identity system.

The information you design for hearing impaired which should be in sign language format, does not work for a visually impaired which has to be in braille printing. And it is not the same for a physically challenged person, an albino, epilepsy etc.

When formatting information, you have to capture all these peculiarities which is lacking for now. It is a big challenge for us, he said.

Concord Times spoke to 17 Persons living with disabilities in Sierra Leone about the collection of the national ID. Some were interviewed in Freetown and the others in Waterloo, one of the largest towns in Sierra Leone, located about 20 miles away from the capital city.