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Monday 4 March 2013

Differently-abled run up against wall of indifference

Srinivasa Reddy.
Srinivasa Reddy. 
 
 
 For the last eight months, 40-year-old Srinivasa Reddy has not been getting his disability pension. The resident of KEB Road, Kadugodi has 75 per cent disability from polio that has crippled his left leg since birth.
Srinivasa does not know whom to approach now. He has been to the State Disability Commissioner’s office where he was told that the concerned officers are not available.
Later, he went to the panchayat office in Kadugodi where he was told that they do not have funds.
Srinivasa told Deccan Chronicle that he used to get a disability pension of Rs 400 every month, but even this has stopped eight months ago.
For the past eight years Srinivasa has been working as a lift operator at Blue Cross Chambers on Infantry Road.
He has two daughters, studying in the seventh and third standards.
He says he has heard that the pension has been increased to Rs 1,000, “but I have no idea when we are going to get it. We used to get 25 kg rice for Rs 3 per kg, but now for the past few months I am just getting 16 kg of rice,” he says, showing up the welfare scheme for the sham it is.
He is entitled to a disability bus pass but cannot get it renewed because the Shantinagar BMTC office says it has not received any intimation from the Disability Department and so they cannot issue the pass.
Like Srinivasa, many disabled people have not been getting their entitlement for the past couple of months.
Nazirullah Khan, a visually impaired person, who works as a telephone operator at the Blue Cross Chambers building has the same problem.
When contacted, K.V. Rajanna, Commissioner for Person with Disability, Karnataka, said: “There was a lot of duplication in the number of cases, so we were doing the verification, hence we had stopped all the facilities.
However, just a day ago the State Revenue Department has issued orders re-sanctioning the cancelled pension of 1,48,568 eligible persons with disabilities throughout the State. So they will be getting the pension soon.”

 Source : Deccan Chronicle , Bangaluru ( 3rd  march 2013 )



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