ILOILO CITY. Feb 24: The municipality of New Lucena, one of the two pioneering sites of the of the Non- Handicapping Environment project in the country, played host to the first quarter meeting of the Regional Committee on Disability Affairs 6 for this year last February 23.

Mayor Liecel Mondejar-Seville lauded the effort of the RCDA to hold the meeting in their municipality as this gave them the opportunity to know what other assistance and programs they could avail of from other government agencies in support of the NHE project and to further uplift the welfare of the Persons with Disabilities in the area.

Seville said that with the activity “we hope we can access more help from RCDA and coordinate with other agencies as our PWDs need to be more capacitated and empowered”.

The RCDA is an inter-agency committee composed of representatives of the different concerned agencies of the government, Provincial and City Social Welfare Development Offices and PWD organizations in the region.

Department of Social Welfare and Development 6 Focal Person for Disabled Persons Judith Marte said among the focus of the meeting was the status of implementation of the NHE project in the municipality and for possible replication of the project in the other provinces in the region.

To date, there are 478 registered PWDs in the municipality and most of them have orthopedic disabilities.

Profiling of PWDs that included baselines survey, updating data on PWDs and classification of disabilities are among the 5 major components of the NHE project being implemented in the municipality since 2008.

Jointly implemented by the National Council for Disability Affairs and Japan International Cooperation Agency, the NHE project seeks to make public places and other establishments in rural areas accessible to PWDs in accordance with the existing universal design concepts alongside with the compliance with the Accessibility Law or Batas Pambansa Bilang 344.

Source: http://www.pia.gov.ph