Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

Grievances of physically challenged redressed

TIRUCHI: The first sitting of the mobile court to hear complaints from persons with disabilities have received 465 complaints, and 450 of them were redressed, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan said on Sunday.

The sitting was chaired by Chief Commissioner of Disabilities of the Union Government Manoj Kumar and State Commissioner for the Disabled V. K. Jeyakodi. The court held its sitting, the first in Tamil Nadu, at the venue of Samarthya 2008, a national exhibition on assistive devices for persons with disabilities, being held in the city.

About 225 complaints about the issue of disability certificates were received. A majority of the petitioners, about 200, were persons with orthopaedic disabilities.

The other types of complaints, including those regarding pension schemes (103), employment (59) and education (11), were also heard and redressed. “The two-day sitting had medical officers and government officials to redress all sorts of complaints and solutions were drafted right away,” said Director of National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities Neeradha Chandramohan.

Similar mobile courts would be held in Chennai shortly, and then in other metropolitan cities, Ms. Jagadeesan told reporters.

In all, 2,800 people of the 3,000 visitors to the exhibition each day were benefited. Assistive devices, ranging from tri-cycles, crutches, hearing aids, solar charging batters to Braille watches, were distributed.

The Union Ministry, in coordination with State Governments and non-government organisations, has begun a pilot project in Tamil Nadu under the Assistive Devices in Persons with Disabilities (ADIP) scheme for distributing aids and appliances for the physically challenged.

On the early intervention programmes, Ms. Jagadeesan said the Government was training anganwadi workers in sensitising pregnant mothers to the effects of malnutrition and identifying physical aberrations among children. The Department was conducting awareness programmes for workers at the primary health centres and identifying disabilities throughmultimedia camps conducted by State Governments. Assistive devices for the 1000-odd students, assessed at the district-level disability identification camp conducted by the NIEPMD in November, would be distributed in a couple of months, Ms. Jagadeesan said.

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