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CHENNAI: Disabled people don’t expect new laws in party manifestos. What they want is the implementation of the Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2016. As S Namburajan, General Secretary of the TN Association for the Rights of All Kinds of Persons with Disabilities and Carers (TARATDAC), says: “People with disabilities want Dignity of life that can only be achieved if they are equipped with jobs. “Compliance with the law will reduce unemployment, poverty and homelessness for people with disabilities, as 5 percent of jobs in the private sector and 4 percent in the state sector will have to be reserved for people with disabilities, he adds, and vacancies must also be filled .
If the government cannot create jobs, it should at least raise the disability benefit to 3,000 rupees, as in Puducherry and Telangana, he argues. “Tamil Nadu is only offering Rs 1,000.” According to Vaishnavi Jayakumar of the Disability Rights Alliance, political parties must pay attention to the guarantee of the law to create an accessible environment. “Accessibility through universal design is not negotiable. Not only because it is the law, but also because we are fed up with majoritarianism in the design of public transport or public spaces. People can’t even go to school or watch a movie.
We’re just stuck at home and invisible, ”she says. Professor TMN Deepak of the December 3rd Movement believes that all local government posts must be adequately represented by people with disabilities. “Programs and support should get them right,” he adds. In addition to these structural changes, the municipality hopes that the daily bottlenecks in government services will be resolved. Significantly, the bottlenecks in obtaining a disability certificate, on the basis of which the services can be accessed, must be eliminated. R Pushpa, a disability rights activist, says the process is especially difficult for people with mental illness. “In the past, NGOs could issue the certificate, but under the new law, only the government can.
So there are big delays, ”she says. D Gnanabharathi, president of the Spinal Injured Persons Association, says he has focused on the certification process for the past two years. “The disability classification method itself is wrong. For example, people with bladder problems have a 90% disability. those with sensory problems than 60%. But someone who has all of these problems gets a certificate of 75% disability because it is a spinal cord injury, ”he explains.
Gnanabharathi adds that side-wheeled scooters should be given to amputees with a disability greater than 60 percent and that they should be offered a free bus ride. District hospitals should also set up a disability management department, he suggests. What the municipality wants The municipality hopes that the electoral commission will make it easier for them to participate in the electoral process. Even getting voter IDs is difficult, says Punitha Suresh, a social worker at The Banyan. Similarly, people with disabilities may have difficulty using the postal voting service as it is difficult to obtain a disability certificate, activists add.
Demand for an increase in the allowance
The General Secretary of TARATDAC says that if the government cannot create jobs, it should raise the disability benefit to at least 3,000 rupees, as in Puducherry and Telangana
It’s a universal adult franchise. For the marginalized, the ink on their finger after the vote is the only reminder that they count in this democracy. Their needs and aspirations are invisible to this political society. As with people with disabilities …
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