The government has turned a blind eye to the rehabilitation and welfare of nearly four million disable persons in the country, leaving their fate to God's mercy. The officials over the years have been neglecting the proper use of funds earmarked for the welfare of the downtrodden segment of the society.
These facts were mentioned in a report presented to the Standing Committee recently.
According to the report, a copy of which was obtained by Business Recorder, there are nearly four million disabled persons in the country, comprising 2.49 percent of the population (Census 1998).
Province-wise break-up shows that 0.008 million are in Islamabad, 1.82 million in Punjab, 0.92 million in Sindh, 0.37 million in NWFP, 0.014 million in Balochistan, 0.021 million in Northern Areas and 0.8 million in AJK.
Disable persons feel very underprivileged and deprived as they are being treated unequally.
According to the report, 51 special education centres have been established for them all across the country. Meanwhile, it also shows that there is only capacity of 3050 students in the institutions while 4689 students are enrolled.
Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education has announced to make Islamabad and the four provincial capitals as disabled-friendly cities, but unfortunately not much has been done in this regard yet.
There is great resentment among the downtrodden segment of the society as jobs are not being provided to them, as well, according to their quota.
The opposition legislators in both houses of parliament have also raised their voice for the increase of disabled persons' quota to 2 percent, which is in doldrums.
The other major factor of lack of facilities to disabled persons is government's weak mechanism to monitor the financial assistance given to the needy and disabled people.
Pakistan Bait-ul-Maal is also under constant criticism by the parliamentarians for not providing help to genuine and needy people. There is strong demand of making PBM system more transparent and efficient, most importantly expeditious.