KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday urged the corporate sector to open their doors and adopt the cultural of inclusiveness by providing more employment opportunities to speech- and hearing-impaired youth.

“My government has already allocated a separate quota for differently-abled persons in government jobs and we will offer jobs to recently graduated students,” he announced while speaking at the inauguration ceremony of Deaf Reach Campus & Bachelor of Arts Convocation in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

The chief minister said that the provincial government in the valuable partnership with Deaf Reach was imparting education and training to differently-abled children.

“This is a noble cause in which the founder of the Deaf Reach, Richard Geary, and his team has given a helping hand to the Sindh government,” he added.

The event was attended by chief minister’s special assistant Sadiq Memon, chairman of STEVTA Saleem Jalbani, STEVTA Managing Director Dr Mustafa Suhag, secretary of special education Hadi Bux Kalhoro, and others.

Mr Shah said that he was overwhelmed to have met these differently-talented students at Deaf Reach, who had graduated from the Bachelor of Arts programme, and those who were sitting in classrooms.

“It is the vision of my government to provide ample opportunities for growth to differently-abled persons,” he said.

The CM said that he was impressed with the facilities that hearing-impaired students were being provided by Deaf Reach.

“I have seen their digital sign language learning programme,” he said.

Murad Ali Shah said that he was proud of Deaf Reach with their six schools in the province and urged them to enhance and strengthen the partnership in other districts such as Larkana and Hyderabad.

The chief minister said that the building of the Deaf Reach in Gulistan-i-Jauhar had the capacity to have two more floors which he announced to build to accommodate more students.

It may be noted that the Deaf Reach building is owned by STEVTA, which the chief minister gave to Deaf Reach for the centre where currently 2,000 students are receiving education.

The Founder of Deaf Reach, Richard Geary, speaking on the occasion told the CM that there were over 100,000 children with hearing impairment living across the province, who he had to bring to his centre for learning.

Earlier, the chief minister visited classrooms, met the children and interacted with them.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2023