Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah. PHOTO: PPP
"I am committed to rehabilitating persons with disabilities and giving them their due share in every walk of life - from education to employment opportunities."
The chief minister made these remarks at an event organised by the provincial Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities to celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the Banquet Hall of CM House. The event was attended by cabinet members, secretaries and members of civil society.
During his speech, the CM recalled that on December 3, 2016, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, he was working in his office when his staff told him that differently-abled persons, on their wheelchairs, were staging a protest outside the CM House. "I called them inside the [CM] House but they couldn't embark on the secretariat floor because it had no ramp facility," he said, adding that this caused him a lot of distress and the next day, he got ramps constructed at all the gates of the CM House and Secretariat.
Shah said that he has not done as much work as he should have done for differently-abled persons during his tenure as a chief minister, but "what I have done is the difference that today, on December 3, you are celebrating your international day with us instead of staging protests for your rights."
He said that his government has created a separate full-fledged department for the empowerment of differently-abled persons so that they could be empowered through education, physical therapy, medical treatment, encouragement and sports, enabling them to compete for government service for which a quota has been allocated for differently-abled persons.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2019.
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