Persons with Disability (PWDs) are not getting desired benefits from the Swachh Bharat Mission. While 90 per cent PwDs do not have awareness related to the Swachh Mission, 10 per cent of them are still struggling to get incentives even after constructing toilets.
Ensuring drinking water and toilet for PwDs is a major challenge, said speakers at the observance of the International Day for Disabilities here on Thursday.
Odisha Vikalanga Mancha along with Pragati Jubak Sangha, Bhadrak shared the findings from a study ‘Ground-level status assessment on inclusion of PWDs in Swachh Bharat Mission in rural Odisha’.
The assessment has covered 1,320 households of PwDs in 15 gram panchayats across 15 districts, including Baleswar, Bhadrak, Keonjhar, Jajpur, Kendrapada, Ganjam, Cuttack, Khurdha and Puri.
There is a serious need of orientation from top to bottom on providing accessible toilets to PwDs, catering to the need of each and every individual PwD’ said Jubak Sangha secretary Debabrata Dash.
Besides, many differently-abled people and activists under the banner of the Odisha Bikalanga Manch stage a rally at MG Marg here pressing for fulfillment of an eight-point charter of demands.
The demands include allocation of Rs 5,000 crore in the budget for physically-challenged, five per cent reservation in Government jobs and monthly
assistance of Rs 300 to Rs. 3,000 by abolition of the State Government’s order promulgated on April 14 that stopped disbursal of monthly assistance to those who were not orphans, said Niranjan Behera.