A ray of hope for the disabled

CHENNAI: A job fair for the disabled saw 53 private companies interviewing 2,070 candidates and shortlisting 479 of them on Sunday, lending them a ray of hope after having knocked in vain at the doors of the government for long.

Activists have generally said that the government had been apathetic

to the demands of the various organisations. They say the lone exception has been an incident on May 29 when Chief Minister M Karunanidhi offered job to a disabled pregnant woman who was qualified to be a special teacher and fell ill during a fast by the fellow-category people demanding government employment.

While this act of the CM grabbed headlines, the activists lament that there had been no positive response to the over 50 protests by around 200 organisations of the disabled in the past four months demanding various categories of jobs in government.

There has been no positive result to such requests despite Karunanidhi, who holds the portfolio for the welfare of the differently abled, himself having said at a felicitation meeting held by the disabled people that his office was open for them any time.

On Sunday, S Kani (25), an orthopaedically handicapped person, who was waiting for his turn at the job fair, organised by the Ability Foundation in the city, said the private sector was doing a great job by giving them jobs. “But how many people will they hire? What about the government? They are, after all, the biggest employers.”

Just before the Classical Tamil Conference around  mid-June, the differently abled had staged a four-day fast demanding jobs in Category C and D. They ended it following assurance that the CM would meet them after his Coimbatore trip.

P Simmachandran, General Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Differently abled Association, said the Disability Act gave 3 per cent reservation to physically challenged people. “Most of the people are qualified and have been registered in the Employment exchange for  over 7 to 15 years,” he added.

Categories A and B alone have 8,000 vacancies even as the government had no data about the vacancies in categories C and D jobs, he pointed out.