Hyderabad: Call for separate fund for PWDs gets shriller

Hyderabad: After the High Court asked the State government to set up a separate fund for People with Disabilities (PWD), several associations and organisations such as All India Confederation of Blind (AICB), Devnar Foundation for the Blind and Network for Persons with Disabilities Organization, welcomed the court ruling, and also demanded better treatment and faster dissemination of schemes for PWD.

Madhusudan Reddy, the secretary of Sadhana Institute for the Intellectually Impaired, a city-based NGO which works for the welfare of mentally ill children, said, "Disability is a stigma in the society. The situation is worse for the persons with mental disabilities. There are government hostels for visually impaired students, but there is no such facility for mentally ill children. Most of them get abandoned by their parents. This disability is treated as a burden. This is because there is very less scope for their financial independence. Regular schools refuse to give admission to children citing lack of facilities for them."

One of the main problems is that the disability certificates are difficult to obtain from the department concerned. This makes it difficult for them to avail of reservations in educational institutes and the government sector. The posts are then allocated to other categories, taking away opportunities meant for persons with disability.

"Even for the issue universal identity card, many have not been getting it due to lack of certificates for their disabilities," adds Reddy.

Dr A Saibaba Goud, the chairman of Devnar Foundation for the Blind, said, "The right of peoples with disabilities are not been implemented in the state. They don't want to beg on the roads and also be a burden on their families. They are trained and prepared to work. There are many jobs which even they can do."

He adds further, "There are a lot of funds given by the central government for their training programmes. But the government here is not providing any support for their training. The PWDs in our school receive the pension of Rs 3,016 every month. I suggest that the government needs to transfer these funds directly to their account as every month they have to skip around 4 classes to get their money from a long process. There have been cases where the parents of the child take the money which is not used in their development."

M Srinivasulu, the president of Network for persons with Disabilities Organisation, says, "There is definitely a need of separate funds for the disabled people. Unfortunately, the state government has not given any funds to people with disabilities. The Rs 1 crore budget was issued a year back which was created under rights of person with disabilities act demanded by the PWDs." "The government is providing Rs 10,000 to every person with disability in each district.

According to a survey, there are 10, 50,000 persons with disabilities in the state and 7 lakh sedaram certificate holders," adds Srinivasulu. Sedaram certificate entitles the holder to get free medical treatment. The organizations taking care of the PWDs state that the fund of Rs 1 crore is not sufficient for the entire population of PWD population in Telangana.