Zubair Qureshi
President Dr Arif Alvi has re-emphasized the need for making accelerated nationwide efforts to create enabling environment and ensuring all-inclusive participation of persons with physical and mental disabilities in all spheres of society as dignified and respected members.
The president expressed these views while chairing a meeting on the facilitation of persons with disabilities (PWDs), at Aiwan-e-Sadr, Friday.
The meeting was attended by Minister for Zakat, Ushr, Social Welfare, Special Education and Women Empowerment Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Mr Anwar Zeb Khan, Special Assistant to CM Sindh for the Department of Empowerment of DAP, Chairman NADRA, Muhammad Tariq Malik, senior officials of the Federal Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, Social Welfare Departments of Punjab, Sindh, KP, Balochistan, Elementary and Secondary Education Department of AJK, Labour and Human Resource Development Department of Punjab, and representatives of NAVTTC, Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal, Directorate of Special Education, Islamabad, NIRM, WHO and NADRA.
Chief Minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, Khalid Khursheed Khan also attended the meeting through video-link.
During the meeting, the president asked the Federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training (FEPT) to provide a lead role and come up with a proposal on national curricula for providing targeted and quality education and market-oriented skills to differently-abled people (DAPs) in a systematic manner in consultation with all stakeholders including provinces, international organizations, NGOs and private sector to provide a definite and agreed upon world class direction for our educational institutions both at the public and private sectors besides determining teacher to differently-abled- students ratio in schools.
He also emphasized enlisting of skills which could be imparted to DAP’s keeping in view their disability which may also include sign language, braille, software development, setting of businesses and selling the products and services online besides creating a repository of DAP-compliant material containing SOPs, skill enlistment, disability specific reading, research and reference material and should be made accessible to DAPs around the country.
