|
President Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam has urged the Government to undertake six missions to empower persons with disabilities with right type of knowledge, skill and technology. Speaking after giving away National Awards for the Welfare of Persons with Disabilities here today, the President said that the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry must immediately initiative a mission to generate statistics regarding employment of two crore persons with disabilities in the country. He said that the other missions should focus on ensuring disabled friendly work environment in the industrial establishment and offices, promoting manufacturing of high tech assistive devices for differently abled people through public, private and joint sector enterprises with the support of banks and creating awareness for public support for removing their disability. The President said that launched a moment for removal of disability through special ability missions in rural areas should constitute one more mission. He said that medical institutions should be requested to provide voluntary orthopedic corrective help to polio affected patients who cannot be fitted with light weight calipers (FROs). The President said that maximum number of one crore people suffer from visual disability while another 60 lakh are afflicted by locomotive disability. He said, "all efforts must be directed towards finding technology tools for removing these two impairments in a time bound manner".
Felicitating the awardees, Dr. Kalam announced that "Rashtrapati Bhawan is working on a "Speech Applet" which provides a speech interface on my Website for the visually disabled persons". He said it will be released on the Republic Day and will be available to all for download. The President emphasised upon the Government institutions to respect the statutory three persons job reservation for the disabled. He said that there should be a mechanism for effective monitoring of adherence to it.
Earlier welcoming the President, the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Smt. Meira Kumar said that her Ministry is soon going to announce a National Policy for Persons with Disabilities. She said that the thrust of the Policy would be evolving suitable programmes and plans of action for ensuring that rehabilitation facility reaches all disabled persons. The Policy also focus on sensitizing the community about the needs, potential and contribution of the disabled persons. She said that the Ministry with the support of 680 organisations reached out to 2.17 lakh persons who required specialized education services at a cost of over rupees 17 crore during 2003-04. Smt. Kumar said that assistive devices were made available to 2.40 lakh persons costing Rs. 55 crore during the last financial year.
Fifty-eight awards in 14 categories were given away by the President to persons with disabilities for excelling in various fields and institutions engaged in the welfare of disabled persons.
|
