The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Authority to help disabled urged

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 03, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Authority to help disabled urged

Special Correspondent

`Such an authority can have different wings to handle awareness, oversee implementation of constitutional privileges and rights'

Executive Chairman, State Legal Services Authority, Bilal Nazki, greeting Marcia Rioux of the Yok University, Canada at the National Institute for Mentally Handicapped in Hyderabad on Wednesday. — PHOTO: K. RAMESH BABU

HYDERABAD: Bilal Nazki, Executive Chairman, Andhra Pradesh State Legal Services Authority (APSLSA), on Wednesday suggested an independent authority to exclusively look into all aspects concerning the welfare of persons with disabilities.

He was addressing participants at a training programme for volunteers as part of the first-ever Individual Human Rights Monitoring Project for Persons with Disabilities at the National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped (NIMH).

Mr. Justice Nazki felt that such an authority could have different wings to handle awareness, oversee the implementation of constitutional privileges and rights, apart from enforcement and legal wings for grievance redress.

However, generation of awareness, both among the "so-called disabled and the so-called abled," was of paramount importance, he said.

Objectives outlined

Marcia Rioux, co-director, Disability Rights Promotion International, working with York University, Canada, outlined the project's objectives.

The origins of the initiative were a seminar on monitoring in Sweden in 2005, she said, adding a holistic system - to monitor systemic rights, implementation of programmes, everyday lives of persons with disabilities and how it was being represented in the media, was required to be in place.

Rajendra, Regional Representative, Leonard Cheshire International (South Asia Region), regretted the absolute lack of a database concerning the numbers and how persons with disabilities lead their everyday lives.

He lamented discrimination in education and employment against persons with disabilities and their marginalisation. "They have normal needs too," he made a plaintive call.

Data collection

Others who spoke included T. Vijay Kumar, CEO, Indira Kranthi Patham, N. Beena, Administrative Director, Asmita Resource Centre for Women, L. Govinda Rao, former director, NIMH and president, Swadhikaar, and M. Pavan Kumar, secretary, Swadhikaar.

Earlier, in his welcome address, T.C. Siva Kumar, Head, Department of Community Rehabilitation and Project Management, NIMH, said the week-long training programme for the 35 participants would be followed by a two to three weeks of interview-based data collection in urban, semi-urban and rural areas of the State.

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