December 04, 2007	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 23, 1428

MANSEHRA, Dec 3: Speakers at a seminar held here on Monday underlined the need to help the disabled victims of the 2005 earthquake because failure to do so could force them to resort to begging or other anti-social activities.

“In the October 8, 2005 earthquake 69,503 persons were disabled in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP and most of them are still going through the trauma of the calamity. If they are not helped, most of them will fell prey to the evils of society,” said one of the speakers.

To mark the International Disability Day, the Helping Hand for Relief and Rehabilitation (HHRR) and Handicapped International (HI) Pakistan jointly organised the seminar entitled “Society for All” in which people with disabilities, their parents and representatives of the various national and international NGOs participated.

On the occasion, an exhibition of the handicrafts and crockery made by the disabled persons was also organised.

Speaking on the occasion, Mansehra District Nazim Sardar Muhammad Yousaf, director of HHRR Iftikhar Shahzad, HI’s assistant project manager Zeeshan Siddique, Shinkiary Nazim Maulana Wasseur Rehman and others said the federal, provincial and district governments with the collaboration of NGOs were working for the rehabilitation of the people with disabilities.

“But if these efforts are discontinued, there will be negative effects of the lives of the handicapped victims,” said one of them.

The speakers said that over 650 million people around the world lived with disabilities and they made up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority.

Ten per cent of the world’s poorest people are those who had disability and 98 per cent of the children with disabilities belonged to the developing countries and had no access to schools.

They said 30 per cent of world’s street children had disabilities. “The literacy rate of adults with disabilities is as low as 3 per cent and in some countries it is down to 1 per cent for women with disabilities,” one of them pointed out.

They said that about 80 per cent of the people with disabilities were living in the developing countries. According to the ILO, 386 million of world’s working age people had some kind of disability.

They said that according to a British study which was carried out in 2004, mostly victims of rape and violence were people with disability and in developing countries women with disability were high in the cases of rape because they were less likely to obtain police intervention, legal protection or preventive care.

They expressed their sorrow and said that according to the Erra, it was estimated that total number of people with disabilities in AJK and the NWFP stood at 69,503. In Pakistan people with disabilities were routinely denied their basic rights of getting education, living independently in the community, getting jobs, even when well educated, access to information, obtaining proper health and exercising right to franchise.

One of the organisers said their organisation had offered loans to the people with disabilities so that they could earn a decent livelihood. This facility for the earthquake related disabled people could be enhanced from Rs30,000 to Rs50,000.

He said that rehabilitation centres for the disabled were functioning in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP. The children with disabilities on the occasion sang national songs and presented tableau.