Amajority of children with disabilities is facing unending discrimination at the hands of society as well as at homes and the issue calls for efforts by all stakeholders to change the mindset for their ‘mainstreaming’.

Even the incentive of free transport, uniform and books with Rs800 subsistence allowance by the Punjab government has not been able to motivate parents to send their children with special needs to schools. Such children are literally languishing in their homes without any opportunity to see the outer world.

This was the crux of a panel discussion on the issue of “Right To Education – Case of Children with Disabilities – Disparities in Access to School”, organised by the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Management and Technology, this past week. The speakers and participants also unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the police action against the visually-impaired persons on The Mall on the International Day for Persons with Disabilities. They also held an awareness walk on the varsity campus.

The speakers said there were at least six per cent (four million) school-going age children in Pakistan suffering from some kind of disabilities. However, less than 50,000 special children were in schools.

UMT School of Social Sciences and Humanities Dean Prof Dr Abdul Hameed said only four per cent of the children with disabilities were in schools including two per cent in special education institutions. He said the general schools that had accommodated the special children lacked basic services and technologies.

Referring to a door-to-door survey in Kasur and Sheikhupura, Prof Hameed said the major barrier for special children was distance from home to schools, which on average was about 12 kilometres. “Studies show that a school becomes meaningless, if it is more than two kilometres away from a child’s home,” he said.

He said surveys revealed that only five to six special children were there in every village, who could be accommodated in public schools if the government focuses on training of public schoolteachers for the handling and teaching of students with disabilities. He also called for implementation of the Right to Education Act 2014 as well as revision in curriculum of special children.

Public health specialist Dr Abrar Ahmad was of the view that the notion of inclusion of special children was idealistic but the grassroots reality tells that “exclusion is the rule”. He called for early diagnosis of children, if they carry some disability, so that it may be prevented. “If a child is not diagnosed for hearing impairment within a year and a half, the internal speech would disappear and lead the child to hearing impairment,” he said.

He admitted that there was dearth of hearing assessment facilities for minors and added that most of the children with hearing loss remained undiagnosed or under-diagnosed. He stressed that awareness about disabilities must be created through mass media.

UMT Psychology Department chairman Dr Zahid Mehmood said the education of special children was a real challenge because the government was spending only 1.9pc of GDP on whole of education sector in the country. He asserted that inclusive education was a very viable solution but society’s attitude was not supportive.

Dr Abdul Tawab agreed that society’s attitudinal barrier was a major concern but added with an optimistic tone that change was being felt in society towards children with special needs.

Punjab Special Education Department Director Faazil Cheema said the Punjab government was planning to launch an inclusive pilot project in Muzaffargarh and Bahawalpur at a cost of Rs88 million. A PC-I has been approved in this regard.

He said the project would help identify a child’s disability and include assessment of disability, inclusive education of mild-disability as well as training of regular teachers. He said children’s performance would also be assessed. He stressed that education experts should develop models of inclusion.

Mr Cheema regretted that no practical implementation of inclusion was being seen. He suggested that each candidate of teacher training programme should teach at least one special student. He said special education content should also be made part of all curricula.

PACADE Director Inayyatullah, social sector specialist Touquir Ahmad Sharifi, Shahid Memon and Sajid Masood also discussed different issues that were preventing special children from leading a full and happy life.

THE Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (Tevta) has developed world’s sixth and Pakistan’s first online Skilled Labour Market Information System (SLMIS) that will be made functional from January next.

At present, the UK, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka are using labour market information systems. All these systems have been studied in development of SLMIS by Tevta.

Tevta chairman Irfan Qaiser Sheikh says SLMIS will provide key information on Punjab’s labour market including market trends, skill training opportunities in different trades and technologies, data of passing out students and job seekers as well as vacancies for technical persons in the industry.

He says the facility of free registration is available for all the students of technical and vocational institutes, job seekers and employers on this web portal so that unemployed skilled youth may find suitable job opportunities. This web portal will also provide information on employment and unemployment rates in different sectors of industry besides other useful economic data.

The Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Punjab Information Technology Board have actively collaborated with Tevta in the designing of system and its validation process.

SLMIS will be operated and maintained at Tevta secretariat by a team of qualified placement officers and labour market specialists. The labour market information of whole Punjab will be consolidated at Tevta secretariat in coordination with its district level offices. The selection and training of staff for running SLMIS has already been completed during last month and operational instructions have been issued to field offices.

Mr Sheikh hopes that such initiatives by Tevta will help reduce unemployment in the fight against poverty and enable the skilled youth of Punjab to contribute towards socioeconomic development of the country.

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Published in Dawn December 8th , 2014