PESHAWAR: The provincial social welfare and special education department is pondering over a project to train persons with disability in vocations to help them earn a decent living.

There are around 29,000 persons with disability in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who need to be integrated into social as well as economic life in the province.

About 10, 000 persons with disability belong to Peshawar. “We want them to learn skills so that they could earn their living,” said Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Social Welfare, Women Development and Special Education Dr Mehr Taj Roghani, who has floated the idea to equip and optimise skills of the special persons with the technical assistance of the Technical and Vocational Training Agency (Tevta).

A meeting chaired by Dr Roghani that was attended by officials of Tevta, special education and social welfare department discussed availability of funds for the project under which Tevta would train special persons for a period of six months in their area of interest.

In first phase persons with disability belonging to Peshawar will be trained

Mujeebullah Khattak, acting general manager of Tevta, said that there were more than 50 vocational institutes, run by Tevta, in the province. In 23 such institutes, Tevta offers a three-year diploma programme.

“ It is an initiative of Dr Roghani and we want to facilitate social welfare and special education department in training special persons in our institutes,” said Mr Khattak. He added that so far they had trained only normal people but now they would also train special people.

About a year ago, Tevta trained 54 such special persons with the help of Unesco through special funding. They were trained in computer operations, systems, mobile repair, tailoring and as electricians.

“We found that most of them who had no arm or leg, were good in learning tailoring,” said Mr. Khattak. He added that those, who would be referred by the social welfare and special education department, would be assessed according to their ability. They will be trained in different vocations.

The meeting decided to initially provide training to persons with disability living in Peshawar district and later after the success of the programme expand it to other districts. The meeting agreed that social welfare and special education department would provide data and refer persons with disability for training whereas Tevta would provide training but the meeting looked a little puzzled over who would fund the initiative.

“Complicated procedures often prove a big hurdle in actualising or starting schemes for social welfare,” said Dr Roghani, who seemed irked at the rigmarole at governmental level.

Shah Mohamamd Wazir, special assistant for technical education, assured the meeting that funding would be made available for actualising the initiative.

Dr Roghani also visited the crisis centre and handed over sewing machines to 10 destitute women in the shelter home, run by the social welfare department. The sewing machines were provided by a non-governmental organisation Bint-i-Hawwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that runs women friendly spaces also.

Jan Mohammad, head of Bint-i-Hawwa, told Dr Roghani that they would help women in crisis centre to learn a vocation as well as develop market linkages for them so that they could start a new life and earn for themselves when they left the crisis centre. He requested the government to improve coordination with the non-governmental sector.

“I don’t want to let good initiatives of the social welfare department die,” said Dr Roghani, who seemed adamant to start vocation training for the destitute women and disabled persons.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2015

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