Due to Kuwait’s keenness on providing all means of services to all society segments, many public and private sectors employees are learning sign language.
Many state institutions support the activation of sign languages in their departments, such as the ministries of Justice, Interior, Education, Awqaf, Islamic Affairs, Information, Kuwait University, and others, especially that there are about 4,264 people with hearing disabilities, according to a recent statistic issued by the Public Authority for Persons with Disabilities.
A sign language instructor told KUNA that demands on learning the language in Kuwait recently are more increased than ever through training courses organized by the community service center. In a similar statement, an employee in the public sector Noura Al-Qattan called on all other employees to take the initiative to learn this language to contribute to helping deaf people, indicating that there is a dearth of translators in this field.
On his part, an employee in the private sector and a sign language translator Ahmad Al-Ammar was passionate about learning sign language in 2016 as a hobby until it became a profession, where he was keen to keep in touch with deaf people and accompany them.
Al-Zahraa Al-Tamimi, a member of the Deaf Friends team, said that the team members offer to teach the hearing impaired people how to use sign language. She added that the team sought to spread the use of sign language in social media, TV channels, and public places.
Jaber Al-Kanderi called on state officials to recognize the sign language as an official language same as other countries with including a certified translator in all sectors to facilitate the transactions of deaf and hearing disabilities people. He added that Arab countries unified their sign languages in 1999 and a dictionary was published with more than 3,000 signs.
He noted that the state of Kuwait is the first country in the world to interpret three TV news bulletins in sign language. The bulletins were raised to eight per day during the coronavirus pandemic
Source: Kuwait News Agency