BHOPAL : “The teaching faculties at the schools set up for hearing and speech impaired persons do not know the sign language themselves due to which they face problem in communicating with the students. The teachers should be one from amongst us so that he or she might understand the problems being faced by us. There is no specific college for people like us in the state; if there can be special college for people like us in Chennai, Bangalore and Pune, why not in MP. The office of commissioner for disabled welfare is in Bhopal but the present commissioner Baldeep Singh Maini operates the office from Jabalpur and rarely turns up in the office.” The above demands were made by 300 hearing and speech impaired person who had reached the disabled commissioner’s office on Monday morning and started an indefinite sit-in to stage a protest.
An activist for disabled persons and high court advocate Gyanendra Purohit who led the protest said, “The government actually does not fully understand the problem of these people. They are dumb because they can’t hear. After the ruling given by the Indore bench of the High Court the state government started giving reservations to them on some posts of scale-3 officers and peon of some departments but out of them also the totally hearing and speech impaired candidates were declared unfit for the posts. Still the directorate of public instructions is not giving them reservation in contractual teacher vacancies.”
He said that these people came to Bhopal last year in the month of September also to submit a memorandum but nothing happened. Instead, when they tried to meet the chief minister they were driven away of the CM house using force. Afterwards CM gave an assurance that their voice would be heard but nothing has been done since. In January this year they again went to meet the commissioner but he was not in the city. This time also he is not in the city so now we would not go until our demands are met.
