On the eve of Saturday a tribute to the martyrs of Bhopal’s Union Carbide gas leak was given by the special children of Chingari Rehabilitation Centre in the form of a peaceful candlelight vigil at Neelam Park.
Children with different type of congenital disabilities like cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, muscular dystrophy, hearing impairedness, etc participated in this candlelight vigil. The main motto of this peaceful candlelight tribute was to remember the pain and trauma their loved ones had endured.
These children also want the world to learn a lesson from this tragedy and take preventive measures to avoid the recurrence of any such negligent disaster anywhere else in the world. These children are born disabled due to the poisons of Dow Chemical/Union Carbide and not due to nature. We need to learn from this tragedy and create a world where companies cannot spread such poisons. So that, such disabled children are not born.
Chingari Trust has, for the last 12 years, been taking care of the children born with congenital disorders to families affected by the poisonous gas leak of 1984 and the ground water contamination thereafter. As of today, over nine hundred such children are already registered with Chingari Rehabilitation Centre, with about three hundred children coming each day to get physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, special education, supplementary nutrition provisions and transportation facilities – all free of charge.