My work placement during my time in the Philippines is with DSWS; department of Social Welfare Services, similar to our Department of Work and Pension in the UK. In DSWS, I work specifically with the PWD department; PWD stands for People With Disability.

Disabled people in the Philippines can apply to be recognised officially as a PWD in order to get recognition from the government and to get benefits of 5,000peso a year; that is roughly ₤72 a year. With this, also they can get a PWD ID card that enables them to get 20% discount in most places such as restaurant and transport.

So, my jobs involves me going to one of the 85 Barangays (boroughs) of Cebu City daily and receive applications from people with various of disabilities to either renew their PWD ID card or to apply for one. We also invite people with uncompleted application forms to do it again with assistant from the panel (me) and we also invite them for an interview to ensure that everything that had been written down on the application form is correct and to provide us documents to back up their application. We request them to bring a medical proof of their disability, Barangay support letter to prove their residence within the Barangay they are applying at. Also we ask them to provide us a Voter’s Registration and another application requesting assistance from the Barangay.

It is a very long and lengthy process which can be made easier, especially for the deaf applicant and blind applicants. I have spoken to one of the deaf applicants and asked whether he understood the questions asked on the application from, he didn’t, and this is indeed the case as when I am reviewing most applications from the deaf people, most questions are left blank because the questions involve words that even I rarely see. For those who can’t read due to poor education (will be discussed in another blog), there is no access for those who wish to have someone to help them to fill out the form. Nothing. Same goes for blind or visually impaired people, there are no Braille alternative, there are no large print available, normally they get someone to fill out the form for them but if the PWD department of DSWS focuses on the disabled people, why aren’t there any access for them to do it independently?!

This is the 21st Century, wake up people.

The head of the PWD department was very proud to say that this department only employs disabled people because she believes given them a chance. Great? Not really, because though disabled people get employment in the PWD department, there is NO access for them anyway! The head of department cannot, and I really mean it, CANNOT, communicate with his deaf assistant. Everything is said via very very poor English, written on paper. This deaf worker had been in this job for 11 years and did the exact same thing everyday, that all he ever does. He get applications and decide whether it’s complete or not, creating two piles. The NO pile goes to another worker which sorts them out within Barangays for me and my boss to go and interview them. The YES pile get recorded in a book for reference then given to his boss to validate. That all he had done in the past 11 years. Why? Because the boss cannot communicate with her own assistant. Other workers include a wheelchair user, mentally disabled and an amputee, and each to their own get poor access at work.

I aim to change this. Yes my objective of this whole trip is to improve lives for deaf people. To be able to do this, I need to improve the system which the government and the council uses at work, to introduce access for various of applicants and change the application procedure in order to improve the lives of deaf and disabled people, starting with the people on the inside.

My first day at work was chaotic! It was crazy! My first Barangay was Kasambagan, east Cebu and I was working in a very run down sport hall with three tables at one side of the hall with people all over the room. Once I sat down, ready to do my work, people with applications in their hand began fighting over who should be seen first and stood all around the table, even behind us, waving their applicants in our faces in attempt to get chosen. It was crazy! I was reassuring myself not to flip and said to my self ‘This is my first day, you must try and work in the Philippines’s way’. I was so uncomfortable with people behind me, breathing down my neck, waving papers in my face while I was reviewing applications. There was no privacy and absolutely no form of system in place.

I told my boss that I CANNOT work like this, he just laughed and said that I will get used to it, probably thinking ‘snobby Brits!’

Needless to say, I truly flipped.

I took control and picked up the microphone for the PA system and given it to my boss, demanding him to translate what I was saying to the local language while I was speaking in English and signing in FSL. I told everyone to line up in front of one of the panel staff if they are handing in applications or documents and those who are waiting for an interview to be seated until their name is called out.

It was much better to work, even the boss admitted that it was much easier to work. How can we work in an environment like that, we are handling sensitive information, privacy is a must! If we are handing hundreds of applications, you got to have a system in place or the whole thing will just be chaotic!

I was given an application for me to interview the applicant who would normally be already standing in front of me as their name would already be called out over the PA system. This man was not there. I asked the announcer to ask out again. Nothing. I checked the medical history of this person, bingo, ‘deaf and mute’ (this terminology will be discussed in another blog). No wonder this guy was not in front of me, he wouldn’t be able to hear. So I stood up searching for him while the announcer, who is clearly getting frustrated, continued calling out his name. I told her to stop calling out because he was deaf, her response was, ‘oh’ then SHOUTED out his name over the PA. I snatched the microphone away from her mid-sentence explaining that she was very rude and stupid to think that shouting louder would change anything! She was shocked that I said she was stupid and started to retaliate when I stopped her and explained, ‘shouting for a deaf people isn’t going to change anything, you have been in this job long enough to know this, so the best way is to go and get the person personally. You must never ever shout out for a deaf person, you are wasting your breath’.

It still baffles me, maybe even baffling why I’m even baffled in the first place, that there are no forms of awareness for deaf and disabled people within a department DEDICATED for deaf and disabled people.

Come on! Really?!