Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, Population

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Conflict Complicates Aid to Disabled

Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Apr 15 2010 (IPS) - The rising number of civilian casualties in the military operations against the Taliban in Pakistan’s northern provinces has become an early difficulty for a new government project for the disabled.

But the chief of the two-month-old Rehabilitation Project Pakistan is confident that it can face all the challenges thrown its way, despite the fact that it lacks even the most basic data such as the number of people needing its help.

According to project director Mehboob-ur-Rehman, a comprehensive strategy is now underway to identify the disabled people in this South Asian country and provide them aid.

He also says that physiotherapy services are now available for cases of cerebral palsy and children with polio while amputees and those who have joint disorders or suffering from limb paralysis would be treated free of cost. “Those who can’t be treated through physical means would be sent to welfare homes where they would be given 30 dollars per month,” adds Rehman.

That may just turn out costing the government a pretty penny. Unofficial estimates put Pakistan’s disabled population at some 10 percent of the country’s 160 million people. But that figure is said to be climbing of late, not least because of the government’s efforts to go after the Taliban and its sympathisers.

Indeed, most of the estimated 3,000 Pakistanis who lost limbs last year are from Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which until recently was called North West Frontier Province. Since May 2009, the military has been concentrating efforts against the Taliban in these two areas.

But few – if any – of those who have been disabled there have received aid from the government.

Forty-eight-year-old Murad Shah, for instance, can no longer walk after she injured her spine during a skirmish between the military and the Taliban last year in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat district.

“Life is very hard now,” she says. “I used to be able to feed ten family members but now (I have to rely) on others for help.”

Gul Zareen, a shopkeeper, lost both his legs in yet another military operation in Swat last year. “We have been trying…to get free artificial limbs but to no avail,” he says.

The situation has prompted non-government groups to put more pressure on the government to act more promptly and more decisively regarding the disabled.

Handicapped International Pakistan Director Sikandar Ali told IPS recently, “We are preparing a five-point plan that will form the basis for further engagement with policy makers, donor agencies, government, and other stakeholders.”

Among other things, the plan includes rehabilitation programmes, support for inclusion of handicapped in all aspects of daily life, and the elimination of preventable causes of disability.

“Our strategy will give new impetus to the social inclusion of persons with disability,” says Safiqur Rehman, president of Milestone, another non- government organisation working with the disabled. “Recognising disability as a cross-cutting issue, it will focus on accessibility, role of women with disabilities, employment and legislation.” He also says, “We hope greater effort will be made towards mainstreaming disability in national planning and budgeting processes, strengthening partnerships between governments and civil organisations, and strengthening capacity to ensure a rights-based approach to development.”

For sure, even before Pakistan’s number of amputees began to grow largely because of the anti-Taliban efforts, much of the needs of the country’s disabled had already gone unattended.

Even a law that reserved two percent of jobs available for the disabled had been ignored by the government, says Ihsanullah Khan, founder of the Sarhad Development Organisation.

In fact, he says, about 15,000 posts reserved for the disabled in government offices remain unfilled.

In the meantime, says Khan, “majority of the handicapped population either stay home” or end up begging. He says that he has sent several letters to the prime minister to take note of violation of the law, but these have gone unheeded.

Javid Khan of the organisation Mashal (Candle) also notes that there is a lack of teachers and facilities to accommodate the special needs of disabled children. He says that this is despite a law that guarantees disabled children would be educated and provided with the necessary equipment to prepare them for an independent future.

Social Welfare Minister Sitara Ayaz told IPS, however, that the government has already upgraded from primary to secondary level the special education schools that accommodate disabled students. More schools for the disabled are also being built across the country, she says.

An official inquiry into the vacant posts reserved for the disabled in concerned departments has been made as well, she says. According to Ayaz, departments found in violation of the law would be penalised, and the fines collected would be spent for the welfare of the disabled.