Coping with the physically challenged

Except for a tiny social gathering at Peshawar Press Club organised by the NGO called Special Person Development Organisation, the international day for the physically challenged section of humanity passed off without any government department or personality sparing some time and money for the occasion. The NGO sounded the alarm bells by saying that there had been an extraordinary increase in the number of the countrymen having physical disabilities of one or the other kind. Apart from the academic debate as to why the physical disabilities occurred at all in some families, the NGO claimed that the total number of the physically challenged persons at the moment stood at 49,700 out of which 22,603 were young people under the age of 21. With each passing year, the nation witnessed a 12 – five in urban and seven in rural areas – percent increase in the number of the physically impaired individuals. The painful thing about the whole phenomenon is that in order to take care of the disabled persons there are a total of 15 – eight federal and seven those of provincial government – institutions working in the KP. Common thing among these institutions is that they are all ill-equipped and poorly funded.

The physically challenged persons have to face a number of prejudices in a largely hostile and callous society. Even if educated and possessing the required academic and professional qualifications, the physically handicapped men and women are not accepted in any of the government services. Proposals for marriage are summarily rejected if the would-be bride is unlucky to have a slight limp in her walk or the groom has a squint in the eye. The civil society, human rights organisations and enlightened sections of media need to come forward and change the mindset of the general public so as to dismantle the taboos against the physically impaired persons.