BUJUMBURA, January 17th (ABP) – People living with disabilities are also capable of carrying out various income-generating activities to meet their needs. These are the words of Fabien Butoyi, a young man with a leg disability, who runs a small business in downtown Bujumbura. According to him, people with disabilities should focus on entrepreneurship, instead of begging, because, he specifies, the only disability that can prevent someone from working is mental disability. Inaccessibility to start-up capital remains the main challenge facing this category of people, adds Butoyi, before revealing that he started his business thanks to the income from begging that he lived on before pulling himself together.
Butoyi also castigates the behavior of some parents who dare use their children living with disabilities in the despicable act of begging because, according to him, these children grow up knowing that they are not capable of carrying out any other activities. He calls on parents not to stigmatize disabled children, but rather to send them to school like so many others.
He implores the effective involvement of the government in improving the living conditions of people with disabilities by granting them start-up capital for micro-projects and supporting those who have already started.
On the other hand, a sixty-year-old man, Christophe Nzohabonayo, from Mageni village in Ruhororo district of Ngozi province, indicates that he has been living from begging since 1995 following his disability due to the amputation of some of his fingers during the 1993 crisis. He says that thanks to begging, he pays his rent, the daily ration and contributes to the survival of his family left in the countryside.
When asked whether he plans to give up begging, he mentioned the inaccessibility of capital to initiate income-generating projects and requested government assistance.