KARACHI: “We have a depressing mindset, which stops us from helping people with disabilities. It took Pakistan over 50 years to include the right of the child to education in our Constitution. I have yet to go through such a portion of the Constitution which addresses education of disabled or intellectually-challenged children. But it’s not being there shouldn’t stop us from thinking about what can be done.

“If the public sector has fallen short of giving special people this right, the nation can come forward to do something worthwhile here so that such people also feel an ownership towards them. So rather than just observing a day, we must do something,” said senior minister for education and literacy, Sindh, Nisar Khuhro on the occasion of the International Day of Disability on Wednesday, when the Karachi Vocational Training Centre (KVTC) hosted a conference on ‘The rights of the intellectually challenged to work’.

Designer, educator, technologist and an advocate for the intellectually-challenged Qazi Fazli Azeem, who said he suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a type of autism, while sharing his successes in professional life in Pakistan and abroad, said that special children needed their parents’ support, too. “Don’t talk about what your children can’t do. Talk about what they can do,” he said.

Qaysar Alam, father of an intellectually-challenged boy, said he thought his son was very normal at first and also sent him to normal schools. “But when the new principal in his school pointed out that he was hyperactive and needed special education, I was furious as I just didn’t want to accept this fact,” he said, adding how his son benefited after he enrolled him at the KVTC.

Mr Alam also spoke about how people treat special people and intellectually-challenged individuals in the West. “The developed world has a system to help prepare the special people there for the world. They give them respect. No one makes fun of them there,” he said. “If you help such individuals, they can become a useful part of society rather than become a burden on society.”

Shahnawaz Agha of the KVTC urged the people to look at disability as a possibility and not a dead end.

Earlier, UK-trained vocational therapist and co-founder of the KVTC Robina Inam said that the physically- and intellectually-challenged had a right to work and recieve proper training to be able to do that. “The human eye focusses more on disability than ability. So we decided to take the ‘dis’ out of disability when we first founded the KVTC in a two-room apartment back in 1991.

“Later, the Defence Housing Authority was kind enough to let us have the space we are located at today. But the building we are in cannot accommodate wheelchairs and many of our students would benefit from a building with ways and ramps for wheelchairs, too, so I appeal to the corporate sector to help us in this matter,” she said while talking about the high points of working with their students over these years like training athletes for the Special Olympics and other international tournaments and championships, seeing the trainees being hired by the fastfood chain Mr Burger and other companies such as Attock and Unilever Pakistan.

“But the last thing we need from you is sympathy,” she said. “We only need your support, no sympathy.”

Farhan Akhtar, a KVTC director, said the conference was organised to crate awareness of intellectual disability so that persons with disability could be rehabilitated.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2014