SWABI Oct 26: Over 1,600 disabled people of the district have not been provided any facilities by the present provincial and federal governments, said leaders of Khidmat-i-Mazooran Tanzeem (KMT) in a meeting here the other day.

The meeting, chaired by the KMT president Baidar Khan, noted that the coalition government of the Awami National Party and Pakistan People’s Party had not given even a single wheelchair to the KMT, which was the only registered body of the special people in the district.

They alleged that the government had politicised welfare programmes of the special people.

Fazaldad, the KMT general secretary, claimed that a provincial minister and an MNA belonging to the district had stocked some wheelchairs at their residences, but they gave them to the deserving only on the basis of political affiliations.

They said that the introduction of special card was another issue perturbing the disabled, as it was quite difficult for the special people to visit the local Nadra office repeatedly for preparation of the card.

Each special person, they said, had to spend Rs500 to Rs1,200 on computerised disabled card, but even then getting the monthly amount of Rs1,000, announced by the government, was a difficult task. They claimed that not a single disabled person in the district was facilitated under the Benazir Income Support Programme.

The KMT office-bearers have appealed to the government, local parliamentarians and philanthropists to assist them in provision of facilities to the disabled people. They said that they had stopped construction work on KMT hospital at Anbar due to lack of funds.

However, they said that some philanthropists from abroad had expressed readiness to provide financial assistance for the construction of the hospital in the district.