One of the country’s non-governmental organizations, Campaign for Health Education, Sanitation and Hygiene (CAHESH) has urged political parties to put their manifestos in accessible and user friendly format to enable persons with hearing or visual impairment to go for a candidate of their choice.

CAHESH Executive Director MacDonald Kaluwa made the appeal on Monday in an interview with Malawi News Agency (MANA) ahead of the fresh presidential elections.

“People with disabilities like those with visual impairments have for a long time been sidelined and have not been given a matching platform with others in deciding what is good for them as far as their choice for political leaders is concerned,” Kaluwa said.

He observed that most person with hearing or visual impairment fail to choose leaders of their choice because they have no access to political parties manifestos.

Kaluwa said Malawi is a signatory to the Marrakech Treaty of 2013 that seek to facilitate access to publications for persons with visual impairment.

“Time has come for political parties to level the playing field by making information of their manifestos friendly to all people in the country,” he said while further observing that political parties have lost would be votes due to failure to provide their manifestos in an accessible and user friendly format.

“This has been detrimental to the political scene as most people are not enticed to vote due to lack of information on what the political parties would do for them,” Kaluwa added while urging political parties to ensure that the welfare of persons with disability should be clear in their manifestos.

He noted that focus of many political party manifestos have been on improving agriculture, health and education sectors without talking of disability as a crosscutting issue.

“My humble plea to political parties is that they should prioritise three things which are; making agricultural inputs affordable, making health care accessible and ensuring universal access to quality education”, he said while urging for disability inclusiveness.

In the meantime political parties in the country are holding campaign meetings to woo voters ahead of the fresh presidential elections.