CEM donates wheel chairs, others to PWDs in Kumasi

The Christ to the Rural World outreach, a breathtaking initiative of the Charismatic Evangelistic Ministries (CEM) this year, cut down its wheelchair donations from a thousand to two hundred and forty because of high taxes on the assistive devices.

The outreach made this known in Kumasi when it distributed huge truckloads of bags of food items; toiletries; buckets, packed food, drinks, medications, cutlasses, lanterns, wheelchairs, white canes and other assistive devices for persons with disability.

The disability targeted program dabbed “Day of Help,” which came off at the Heroes Park in Kumasi witnessed a ground swell as thousands of persons with all forms of disability trouped in to take delivery of their items and also receive free medical care from a 450 member medical team.

Speaking to Ultimate News, the General Overseer of the Charismatic Evangelistic Ministries Rev. Steve Mensah was almost driven to tears seeing thousands of people crawling on the bare ground and several others being carried into the square with no hope of living a decent and independent life in wheel chairs.

“We wish that we had more wheel chairs for more people who are crawling on the ground and that is our regret because there are a lot of taxes on them. We want government to reduce the taxes because we want to import ten thousand wheel chairs into the country for the disabled.”

Founder of the Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo who was directly involved in the distribution of the items to the persons with disability; beckoned government to have special tax exemptions for non-governmental institutions and religious bodies that import items for mass donation to the public.

“My plea to the government of Ghana is when organisations like CHRIST to the Rural World is importing things; they should be offered very special certificates of exemptions because they have a track record showing that whatever they bring is not for sale. It will shock you to know that every wheel chair brought in, had something like 70 dollars tax on the wheel chair so instead of the 1000 wheelchairs they brought in last year, they could only bring 240 this year,” he bemoaned.

The Kumasi Metro Chairman of the Federation for the disabled Prince Debrah reiterated the enormity of the work of government in helping the thousands of their members in the region to gain assistive devices and jobs, vocational skills and start up capital for entrepreneurship.

The minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection Cynthia Morison told reporter Ivan Heathcote – Fumador that beyond such donations, her outfit was also looking forward to ensuring that all children with disability attain the right education that will make them useful to society.

The event which took Kumasi by storm also brought together notable men of God in the city including Rev Simon Ampofo from the Gracefields Evangelistic Ministries and Rev. Victor Osei from the Family Chapel International who graced the occasion.

This will be the fifth Day of Help event held by the Charismatic Evangelistic Ministries and the first in the Ashanti Region as the church and its partners aims at its ambitious objective to rid the streets of Ghana off beggars most of whom are Persons With Disability.

The church is on course to build the biggest disability Village with nine thousand (9000) homes to host seventy thousand (70,000) disabled people on a two thousand acre land.

The village will be tooled to give entrepreneurial skills and IT training to PWDs to empower them economically to live independent and productive lives.