UP achieves maximum school enrolment of Chidren with Disbilities

Lucknow, Aug 4 (UNI) The Uttar Pradesh government, having already won kudos from the Centre for its pro-active steps towards welfare of persons with disabilities, has achieved the distinction of enroling ninety per cent of children with disabilities to the schools.

Over 2.40 lakh such children had been admitted to various government schools in the state, the maximum figure among all the states in the country, UP Secretary of Handicap Welfare Rohit Nandan said here.

Teachers in as many as two lakh government schools would be specially trained to deal with children with disabilities. ''The task has been taken up to be accomplished in two years time from now,'' he said during a multi-media presentation at the Press Club last evening.

Mr Nandan said the training of the teachers was an important component of the sensitising programme of the state government to make children with disabilities feel part of the mainstream. ''The state government has decided not to open any 'special' school for such children as the government endeavoured to treat all the children alike,'' he said.

The children, who had dropped out from schools due to disabilities or other reasons, were being enrolled again in the drive taken up jointly by Basic education department under sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Handicap Welfare department in the state.

Under the provisions of the SSA, the state government had taken up the target based approach to ensure cent per cent enrolment of children in the age group of 6-14 but the upper age had been relaxed up to 18 years in the case of children with disabilities.

Mr Nandan said efforts were on to construct ramps in all the schools compulsarily for the convenience of children with physical disabilities. The construction of ramp in over 44,000 schools in the state had been completed so far, he informed.

He said that in Uttar pradesh, there were about 35 lakhs Persons With Disability (PWD),out of which 50 per cent were in the age group of 25-60.

UNI SB VA BST1527