Saturday, 20 April 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) said that they cast their vote in the Lok Sabha election on Friday hoping the new government will work for their upliftment by prioritising and addressing the issues of the disabled community that often remain neglected. Many opined that the government mostly sees PwDs as a sad case and fails to go beyond providing them ration and pensions.
A 26- year-old woman Sakshi Verma said, “We strive to live a normal life on a daily basis and expect the government to put some extra effort into providing good education besides affordable and accessible health insurance. There are few policies to ensure a family can easily find good schools in every district for their special child. Many have to compromise with the quality of education due to a lack of good options. The government should treat our education as important as that of others.”
A man named Nandan who was accompanied by his father to a polling booth in Rajpur said that the government should strictly focus on making all public and private spaces, products and services accessible for disabled people. “Many of us struggle to enter various restaurants, clothing stores and grocery stores because they do not have PwD friendly arrangements. This might not be considered a big issue by people with no disability but it is a big deal for us. A person should be able to buy his or her own groceries or clothes but I cannot do it because commercial bodies consider it an additional inconvenience to make suitable arrangements for the entry and movement of a wheelchair on their premises,” Nandan said.
Agreeing with this statement, first-time voter Mrinali said that these basic facilities should be the norm by now but a person with a disability still has to plead and ask the government to ensure they get these bare minimum facilities. A 28-year-old man Abhay Gusain said that he expects the new government to provide at least five per cent reservation to PwDs in elections so that they can be a part of the government. “The representation from the PwD community is important in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections to ensure the government is more empathetic towards our issues. I think that no strong representation from the PwD community is one of the reasons we still need to ask the government to provide us with basic facilities,” he said.
A disabled woman Revti Singh said that the new government should also establish a sports infrastructure for para-athletes in the State.
