Admin vs trainers: Rehabilitation centre, its trainees suffer due to internal disputes

Centre has not been taking any new trainers with the current enrollment remaining at 30.

HYDERABAD: More than 30 years since its inception, an organisation formed to enable physically and mentally challenged people acquire skills and employment is no longer able to meet its objective — or so it appears from the statistics of the trained graduates and condition of a government centre working for this purpose in Hyderabad.

The Rehabilitation Centre for Physically Handicapped — one of 19 such centres in Sindh — has graduated only 464 people in six separate skills since the centre opened for training. Only 23 of the graduates have found government jobs while 47 others were employed by the private sector, according to Zubeda Thaeem, the assistant director of the centre.

For the last two years, she revealed, the centre has not been taking any new trainers as the current enrollment has remained limited to 30. The actual attendance, however, appeared to be barely one fifth of the total. “Many of the trainees have gone on winter vacation,” said Thaeem when asked about the low attendance.



At the centre, the trainees can learn sewing, welding, lathe chisel sharpening, carpet weaving, embroidery and chair weaving. There are also few books for reading for the visually impaired. “We haven’t been provided any new tools and machines in a long time. The ones we are using are becoming obsolete,” complained Khalid Ansari, who is one of the six trainers at the centre.

Among the 30 trainees enrolled, many have been diagnosed with polio and others are physically and mentally challenged. Amjad Laghari, from Moro town in Naushehro Feroze district, however, is satisfied with the skills he has been taught at the centre. “I have started to make a living by weaving chairs which are brought to the centre from the market,” Laghari, who is visually impaired and has been living in the centre’s hostel for two years, told The Express Tribune. But he is only one of the three persons who have been staying at the hostel and attending the centre regularly. The other enrolled trainees rarely come to the centre, according to a staff member who requested anonymity.

Closer look

Muhammad Rafiq Rajput, who heads an advocacy NGO for handicapped people, is also unhappy with the centre. He states that in addition to offering low grade services, the centre also suffers from lack of coordination. “The federal and provincial governments have set a two-per cent-quota in government jobs for the handicapped,” he said. “Such centres are meant to train and build the trainees’ capacities so that they are able to do these jobs. But the centre does not train them well and unfortunately, the governments do not implement that quota.”

Meanwhile, the centre’s trainers blame the management and higher officials, saying that they have recently provided names of 40 persons who can be enrolled at the centre. “But we were told that we lack resources and that there are problems of conveyance and hostel accommodation,” said Abdul Hameed Panhwar, who is another trainer at the centre.

The centre’s head, however, rebutted these claims, and put large part of the blame squarely on the instructors. “We can bring more trainees to the centre but the problem is that the trainers don’t work regularly and up to the mark,” Thaeem reproached.

Provincial minister of social welfare, Rubina Qaimkhani, aware of the predicament, said, “When I last visited the centre, I felt that they were playing up the enrollment. Fake men and children brought from the streets were made to act as trainees,” she admits bluntly.

The minister is hinging her hopes to bring about an improvement in the Rehabilitation Centers for Physically Handicapped and the other two departments in her ministry with the help of a monitoring committee. According to her, the committee will take stock of the situation and will make recommendations to completely overhaul these centres.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2014.