KARACHI, Feb 16: A physical fitness class and children’s park were inaugurated at the Vocational Training Centre for Disabled Persons in Gulistan-i-Jauhar on Saturday morning.

Carpet etc for yoga classes have been provided by the Parents Teachers Association and swings, slides etc, for the children’s park have been provided by the Rangoonwala Community Centre.

Handicapped children presented beautiful tableaus and gave beautiful demonstrations of yoga and other exercises in their new class to the Federal Special Education secretary Perveen Qadir Agha who was the chief guest at the inauguration ceremony.

Three institutes for handicapped children — the Quaideen Special Education Centre for Mentally Retarded Children, Vocational Training Centre for the Disabled Persons; and the Shaheed-i-Millat Special Education Centre for the Blind — are working in one complex.

An office of the Bait-ul-Maal is also operating in the hostel portion of the complex that was originally constructed so that handicapped children could live there. But since it had never been used for the hostel purposes from the time it was constructed, it had been rented out to the Bait-ul-Maal.

Though all of these are government organizations, they continuously face shortage of funds and have to depend heavily on the active parent teachers associations which are providing substantially for fuel for the vehicles that bring from and drop off the children to their homes, and teachers’ and other staff’s salaries.

The government has established these organizations for around 100 handicapped children, but at present over 350 children are being provided special education and other vocational trainings at the complex.

A beautiful auditorium had been left half way as the funding that was available last year could not be utilized in time and had lapsed.

As there is a lot of space, rooms etc available so if additional funding is provided, many more handicapped children could be provided with special education vocational training in the complex easily.

Trainings in flower making and packing, electrical, computer, mechanical and welding, candle making, embroidery, cutting and sewing, etc, are provided at the vocational training centre operating in the complex.