According to Special Olympics Bharat Jharkhand chapter officials, most of the Ranchi villagers do not have disability certificate meant for differently-abled persons due to lack of awareness. The disability certificate is said to provide railway and academic benefits to such category people.
“In our ongoing camps named ‘Unified Sports’ identifying differently-abled children and youngsters as athletes at Ranchi and Namkum, we found that parents of these differently-abled children residing in villages are unaware about disability certificates. They usually ask us the relevance of these certificates,” said Special Olympics Bharat Jharkhand’s Assistant Area Director Satbir Singh Sahota on Thursday during a sports interaction programme between disabled and normal children at Namkum block.
Notably, the certificate is issued by civil hospital. ‘It is given on the basis of certain medical examinations. There are four types of disability certificates namely for hearing impaired, mental retardation, visually impaired and orthopaedic individuals,” Sahota added.
Sahota said, “The maximum benefit through this certificate is given to the mental retardation and visually impaired individuals. It is around 75 per cent. For hearing impaired individuals it is 35 to 50 per cent but it differs for orthopaedic patients.”
Thursday’s camp was Special Olympics Bharat Jharkhand’s fourth camp of conducting such interactions. Two more camps are to be held by the end of this year. The fifth camp is scheduled at St Paul’s School, Ranchi on Friday.
As per Satbir, overall 400 children from the age of eight years are participating in this first of its kind camp in Asia. Satbir said that 30,000 athletes under disabled category are registered with Special Olympics Bharat Jharkhand chapter. “Children are basically being identified for Athletics, Football, Bocce ball and soft throw ball events in this interaction. They are learning various playing techniques from the normal children through the competitions organized here,” National Coach for special education Urmila Singh said.