Congress urged to pass laws for deaf community’s welfare

ANDREO CALONZO, GMA NewsFebruary 4, 2013 4:38pm

 

Some 30 members of the deaf community on Monday trooped to the House of Representatives to ask lawmakers to pass more bills protecting their welfare.

Dean Veronica Templo-Perez of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies called on Congress to have a "sense of urgency" in passing laws for hearing-impaired Filipinos.

"The deaf community hopes that someday, we will have a Philippines that accommodates everyone—not just the majority of Filipinos but every Filipino, and that’s including the deaf. This can only happen if we have lawmakers who are aware of the issues of the deaf and persons with disabilities and will work for their brighter future," Templo-Perez said in a speech on Monday afternoon.

The deaf community set up an exhibit at the north wing of the Batasan Pambansa building to promote awareness of the problems being encountered by its members in the Philippines.

Templo-Perez particularly urged the legislature to immediately enact bills that will institutionalize sign language insets on news programs in the country, as well as the measure declaring Filipino sign language (FSL) as the national sign language of the Filipino deaf.

No more time



However, ACT Teachers’ party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, author of House Bill 6079 declaring the FSL as the national sign language, admitted that the current Congress has no more time to pass his measure.

"The struggle to have Filipino as our national language, which lasted for over a century, is parallel to our struggle for the Filipino sign language. There is a mistaken notion that the American sign language is the international sign language, when in fact it is not," Tinio said in a separate speech.

In a report published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Dr. Liza Martinez of the Philippine Deaf Resource Center described the FSL as "the ordered and rule-governed visual communication which has arisen naturally and embodies the cultural identity of the Filipino community of signers."

The party-list lawmaker likewise pledged to re-file his bill, which only reached the committee level in the current legislature, next Congress.

"We will continue our struggle next Congress, but we have already made good strides in raising awareness on the plight of the deaf in the Philippines," he said. — BM, GMA News