Peshawar: An estimated two million people with disabilities, especially paraplegics, have been facing problems in getting certificates to be eligible for obtaining computerised national identity cards and registration for employment under the job quota reserved by government for special persons.
“Interestingly, a physically-challenged person has to go to Police Services Hospital in Police Lines, Peshawar, to obtain a certificate of disability and take the same to Technical Training Centre in Gulbahar from where he is sent to submit it at the Blind Institute in Nanakpura to be able to get disability certificate and Employment Index Card after over two months,” Engr Irfanullah, general secretary of an NGO, the Friends of Paraplegics, told Dawn.
“It is the hardest task for a paraplegic person or even those with other disabilities,” he said. The government should allow the specialists concerned at the government hospitals to issue disability certificates, he said.
Irfan, 30, a resident of FR Bannu, met an accident a few years ago and became paraplegic, but he is now capable of driving a car and has formed Friends of Paraplegics (an NGO) to strive for the rights of those who were bed-ridden and cannot move an inch because they don’t have wheelchairs and all the public places were out of bounds for them.
Even getting disability certificate an uphill task for them, claims NGO
Ninety-five per cent of the disabled people are extremely poor and don’t have wheelchairs due to which they developed bed-sores and their lives are literally pathetic, he said, adding that going to mosques, parks, bazaars, public places, washroom and hospitals wasn’t easy.
Despite two per cent job quota reserved by the government, Mr Irfan got a job as an engineer at the PTV Peshawar Centre six years ago through an open competition. He said that people with disabilities didn’t have higher qualification and the reserved quota was their only hope.
Under the law, many government departments have been penalised for not giving jobs to handicapped people. He said that the funds allocated in budget for 2014-15 for purchase of sewing machines and wheelchairs, etc got lapsed.
He said that the Peshawar Development Authority had agreed that in future special arrangements would be made in new buildings to facilitate disabled people. “Authorities have assured us that it would be included in the PC-1s that government buildings should be designed to ensure accessibility of disabled people,” he said.
“The people look down upon us when we go to markets or offices in connection with some work,” says wheelchair-bound Mumtaz Ali. Some oppose special people’s venturing out in public, said Ali, who suffered a spine injury due to fall from roof five years ago.
The UN says that 20 per cent populations worldwide suffer from disabilities and calls upon its member states to remove barriers in way of their development and take steps to improve public behaviour towards them.
Syed Mohammad Ilyas, chief executive officer of Paraplegic Centre, Hayatabad, says that they have recommended to the government to refer disabled persons to experts for issuance of certificates because it is very difficult for them to walk like normal people.
“The government should assign the task to institutions which are involved in treatment of the disabled people. It will save them from facing troubles,” he said.
