Medical board camps are now under way in different parts of the district to assist around 5,500 differently-abled citizens to secure their disability certificates and thus take maximum advantage of various assistive schemes by the Union and State governments.
The special medical board, comprising doctors from various government hospitals, will consider maximum number of applications at the camps and clear them on the spot as part of the initiative by the district administration under its ‘Kayyethum Doorathu’ outreach programme for the differently abled.
Explaining the benefits of the initiative here on Thursday, District Collector U.V. Jose said the lack of disability certificates was continuing to be a hurdle for several differently-abled citizens in the district to get their deserving dues from the government. “We found around 12,000 such citizens in Kozhikode district, of which 5,500 persons will be covered in the first stage,” he said.
Mr. Jose said the camps, which was formally kicked off at Koyilandy and Kozhikode Government General Hospital on Wednesday, came to the help of 361 such citizens. “We will conduct 22 such special camps in selected locations before September 28 to clear the maximum number of applications,” he said.
“It is the first time that the Medical Board is directly going to the beneficiaries’ locations and helping them clear the pending formalities. The Composite Regional Centre (CRC) for Persons with Disabilities and the youths who are currently part of the District Collector’s Internship Programme (DCIP) are also supporting the mission,” he said. By October end, there would be regional adalats again for those who want to obtain their legal guardianship certificate, he added.
The Collector also pointed out that no government fund was sought to conduct the camps as the volunteering team agreed to mobilise the money by themselves or from interested sponsors. “We decided to organise the special camps as the usual application procedure sticking to the government formalities was likely to take more time to cover all the beneficiaries,” he said.
