New Delhi: In order to provide additional assistance to disabled who are unable to work, the government has prepared a draft to standardise the level of disability.
As per the draft, it has been proposed that persons with serious disabilities would be allowed to hire a person for care, assistance for using legally obtained rights, providing attendees to students studying in schools and colleges, etc.
According to draft guidelines, the disabilities such as mental retardation, difficulty in daily activities and socio-economic status would also be taken into consideration for physical disability in granting severely disabled status.
While talking to Millennium Post, a senior official of the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry said that the new Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 has made a provision for providing government assistance to the seriously disabled people.
However, due to lack of norms for determining the seriousness of disability till now, the benefits of the disabled was not extended to the needed one, the official said.
"The ministry has prepared a draft of guidelines to fix the standards for determining the seriousness of disability. The draft has been prepared in consultation with different stakeholders and final guidelines would be released after incorporating suggestions and comments from all the stakeholders in his regard," the official said, adding that the ministry is very about the finalisation of the draft very soon.
The draft has also proposed setting up of a board at district/division level under the chairmanship of the chief medical officer and that board would issue a certificate of the standard of disability after examining each case.
The government has set a standard of 100 points based on six parameters and disabled people with 60 or more marks out of 100 would be given severe disability status.
Commenting on the
move, Satendra Singh, a disability activist and an associate professor at GTB Hospital,
said, "The initiative is in the interest of the disabled
community, who has been always ignored by the governments. It was a long pending demand."