Govt to increase expenditure for welfare of disabled persons

New Delhi: The government today announced to increase expenditure on the empowerment and welfare of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) from the present 4.31 crore to 45 crore per year in the coming two years.

"In the past 15 years only 64.75 crore was spend on the schemes, whereas it has been planned to spend Rs 90 crore in next two years for implementing the new and revised schemes," Union Minister of Social Justice Thaawarchand Gehlot said.

He was speaking at the launch of revised schemes of National Trust and its upgraded website which has been made more interactive for effective implementation of its programmes.

Two new schemes were also launched including day care facility for PwD and providing financial assistance for marketing the products made by them.

The Department of Persons with Disabilities (PoW) under the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry has revised eight existing schemes by increasing the ratio of financial assistance to related organisations.

Indira Murthy, CEO National Trust, said NGOs were not showing interest in its schemes due to inappropriate funding.

"For the past few years we were observing the beneficiaries were decreasing as the concerned organisation had stopped showing interest. After getting their feedback we realised that it was due to inappropriate funding pattern of our programmes. The monitoring system was also not satisfactory as the website was not smooth," Murthy said.

Keeping in view all these programmes, the department revised its eight schemes and launched two new welfare programmes.

There are around 22 lakh persons suffering from Autism, 15 lakh mental retardation and 21 lakh from multiple disabilities.

He said that the schemes were finalise after consulting various organisation and parents of disabled people in several workshops. "We finalised the schemes after holding wide consultation with parents in seven workshops across various cities," he said.