NEW DELHI, May 25:
Aiming to address issues of people with disability and empower them with education and career opportunities, a separate Department of Disability has been formed under the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry.
“The separate department to look after the issues of people with disability was finally established on May 14. The notification has also been issued for the Department of Disability under the Ministry,” Secretary, Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry K M Acharya said here today.
He was addressing the national conference on ‘Livelihood for Persons with Disability’ organised by an NGO working in the disability sector.
The Department of Disability will be headed by a Secretary-rank officer and will work along with the Department of Social Justice under the Ministry.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik, whose address to the conference was read in-absentia, stressed upon the need for providing education and training to the disabled people.
“As per NSSO survey 2002, only a small percentage of persons with disabilities were employed and had studied higher secondary or above. This shows that there is a huge task of providing appropriate education and training to Persons with Disabilities to make them employable,” he said.
Observing that effective inclusion of disabled people in the present work force is a pre-requisite of inclusive growth in the country, he said, “This will require very effective and coordinated efforts and convergence among various stakeholders in the government, corporate and civil society,”
He expressed confidence that all the stakeholders in this area would come up with new innovative ideas for generating livelihood options for disabled people.
On amendments in the Disabilities Act as per the United Nation Convention, Wasnik said, “In view of developments over last one and half decade and the approach of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, government has decided to draft a new legislation for empowerment of Persons with Disability in harmony with the UN Convention.”
A website was also launched at the conference to generate awareness on available employment opportunities of disabled people.
As per the 2001 Census, there were 21.90 million Persons with Disability in the country which is 2.1 per cent of the total population.
While 74.80 per cent of these people are located in rural areas, rest 25.20 per cent live in urban and semi-urban locations.
Literacy rate of disabled people was estimated at 49.31 per cent and only 34.54 per cent were engaged in some kind of employment. (PTI)
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