RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: Amidst growing number of disabled persons in the province, the Social Welfare and Bait-ul-Maal (SW&BM) Punjab is going to establish a separate directorate titled ‘Disabled Persons Management Information System’ for the facilitation of special persons living in the province with an initial approved budget of Rs 40 million.

Officials familiar with the development told Business Recorder that the decision of establishing this directorate was taken after receiving growing registration figures and complaints from the differently-abled persons in Punjab.

For the purpose, they said, an initial amount of Rs 40 million has been approved by the Punjab government for the construction work, whereas, an estimated cost of Rs 100 million will be spent on its completion in phased programmes.

Under this initiative, an online registration and assessment of persons with disabilities (PWDs) for the online submission of their applications and providing information like assessment boards, meetings and delivering registration certificate at their door step will be ensured through this project, reveals documents gathered by this scribe.

The documents further states that a segregated data based on registered PWDs along with their status of employment or unemployment and nature of services availing from the government will be maintained in the directorate.

Through the directorate, a consolidated online data based on jobs available in public and private sector against three percent disabled quota will also be maintained in order to facilitate the PWDs and to find out suitable jobs as per their capacities along with online referral mechanism against such jobs and their status, the document says.

The background of this project reveals that approximately 15 percent or about one billion of the total world population consists of PWDs. In Pakistan, in the absence of regular census, approximately the total population of persons with different abilities is 5.035 million making more than the population of Norway, New Zealand, Lebanon and Kuwait.

“Currently, the annual growth rate of disabilities is 2.65 percent per annum which is more than the annual growth rate of 2.03 percent of the total population of Pakistan. Only 14 percent of persons with disabilities are in work, rest are reliant on family members for financial support,” the document read.

The scope of the Provincial Council for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons (PCRDP), which was established with very small number of human and physical resources for the registration and rehabilitation of the PWDs, has now been increased after the department registered 142239 PWDs since the inception of the District Assessment Boards (DABs) in all districts till 30 June 2016.

Out of the total registered PWDs, 91,547 are physically disabled, 19,990 visually-impaired, 19,676 deaf and dumb and 11,026 are persons are with mental disabilities,” the document maintains.

To empower special people, the employment quota for the PWDs has also been increased from two to three percent while the age limit has also been relaxed up to 10, giving an opportunity to the PWDs to enter into the government services.

Earlier, the concerned government quarters were facing numerous problems due to limited human resource and lack of staff at district level to redress the grievances and handle matters related to PWDs which badly affected the quality of service delivery. Therefore, there was a dire need for strengthening of the PCRDP, the documents assert.