It is important for people with disabilities to be independent just as it is for anyone else, and this independence should be facilitated. Even small hindrances easily overcome by others, may be, or appear insurmountable for a disabled person, already frustrated by battling with innumerable odds at every step.
Pakistan lags behind other countries in both the fields of treatment and rehabilitation of victims of disabling injury. While therapy and rehabilitation are available, both are struggling without adequate planning or funding. The public lacks education regarding the support required by people with any kind of disability, and this education is not being provided. People with disabilities therefore face hardship and discrimination. They are stared and pointed at on the streets, and in many other subject to callousness.
Businesses and other public places such as airports, and even hospitals are not equipped with requisite facilities such as ramps, handrails, elevators or even doors wide enough to let wheelchairs through. Roads are ill equipped with pavements, and the surface of neither is good enough for wheelchairs or other walking aids.
Yawer lives in England, and owns his own car, which has been especially adapted for him following an injury high at the cervical level which rendered him quadriplegic. This means that both of Yawers arms and both his legs are paralysed.
Yawer drives a battery operated wheelchair. He runs this up a ramp into the driving side of his own adapted car which he drives himself. He operates the minimal controls in the car by means of a tiny amount of movement in his shoulders.
Yawers car has been paid for by the British Government, which also contributes to its running costs.
Yawer has family in Pakistan, but he is only able to visit for short periods. To live here is not easy for him given the absence of facilities for people with disabilities.
A specially adapted car such as the one Yawer owns in the UK costs at least 50,000. When importing such a car into Pakistan, the Government of Pakistan levies import tax equal to 100% of the cost, calculated at a higher rate than on normal cars. This tax is also calculated on the modifications made to the car. A 50,000 car therefore costs at least 100,000 or approximately 1 crore 37 lac rupees.
How many people in Pakistan can afford such an expensive car? How many more, overwhelmingly more, are in need of such cars?
An article in an English Daily by Mr Naeem Ullah says that disabled persons in Pakistan are allowed to import a car for his/her personal use without paying custom duty so long as the car has an engine capacity of 1,300cc, or less. (On checking the figure is actually 1350cc).
However cars 1350cc or less are too small to accommodate a space for a wheelchair and other paraphernalia required by a disabled person, such as a hoist, a ramp, etc.
There are other conditions, according to this report: The person must possess a valid drivers license, and an income of between Rs 20,000-100,000 per month. This is subject to verification by means of the submission of three income tax returns.
Once all documentation is submitted and the applicant is assessed as being genuinely disabled by the Federal Board of Disabled Persons, he or she is provided with an import authorisation certificate from the Ministry of Commerce.
Applicants and those who work with the disabled report that these rules are unreasonable because:
It is not unless there are specially adapted cars available that applicants can learn to drive, following which they can take a driving test to obtain a licenseonly after which they can apply to import a car. Since there are no specially adapted cars available, nor special centres to train disabled drivers to drive adapted cars, it is a vicious cycle.
It is not unless they are mobile that people can be employed, to enable them to submit three income tax returns for income verification, which is a prerequisite. Since it is not always within the familys means to provide transport, and few people can be employed unless they can first get to work, this rule creates another vicious cycle.
Applicants also claim the process is convoluted, and time-consuming; that the Board that assesses applicants for disability does not include a medical doctor, and is therefore not competent to make an assessment. Several say that in spite of submitting all relevant documents, they have not been issued with the required certificates, and have given up hope of ever obtaining them.
It is obvious that disability and its related issues are given little importance in Pakistan, since policies for disabled persons are ill-judged and unplanned to the extent of being obstructive.
Lack of funding is unfortunate, and maybe cannot be helped. Callousness is always unforgiveable.
Can anything be done to make life a bit easier for people with disabilities? This appeal is being made to a Government that does not seem to care at all.
