SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh has sug­gest­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a spe­cial au­thor­i­ty to deal with is­sues af­fect­ing the dis­abled. Ra­mad­hars­ingh made the dis­clo­sure af­ter he spoke with in­di­vid­u­als who suf­fered from cere­bral pal­sy and in­ter­est­ed par­ties at the Preysal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said while the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty was de­signed to deal with spe­cif­ic is­sues af­fect­ing young­sters, the cre­ation of a body to deal with is­sues af­fect­ing dis­abled peo­ple needs to be es­tab­lished.

His min­istry pro­pos­es the es­tab­lish­ment of a day ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tre and a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment cen­tre. The day ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tre will of­fer a range of ser­vices, ac­tiv­i­ties and fa­cil­i­ties and en­sure that prop­er care and sup­port is de­liv­ered to the dis­abled, there­by tak­ing some of the bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty off the shoul­ders of par­ents and guardians who are forced to for­go em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to care for the dis­abled.

He said: "The cen­tre would al­so pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties to re­main in a su­per­vised fa­cil­i­ty in which var­i­ous forms of ther­a­py, recre­ation­al and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties are of­fered dur­ing the day."

Mean­while, the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment cen­tre will pro­vide an in­te­grat­ed set of di­ag­nos­tic and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ser­vices which in­clude fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ear­ly di­ag­no­sis and de­tec­tion of dis­abil­i­ties, of­fer­ing time­ly in­ter­ven­tion ser­vices and pro­vid­ing con­tin­u­ous and mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary as­sess­ment of the needs of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Ra­mad­hars­ingh flew from the Cam­den airstrip, Cou­va, af­ter the meet­ing to re­join his Cab­i­net col­leagues in To­ba­go.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh, on De­cem­ber 9, 2010, Cab­i­net Minute No 1694, agreed that pro­vi­sion for spe­cial chil­dren would be placed un­der the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Act Chap­ter 32:03. Cab­i­net al­so agreed to pro­vi­sions for sin­gle moth­ers who are the sole care­giv­er of a spe­cial child. He said these pro­vi­sions are, how­ev­er, se­lec­tive in na­ture and are in­tend­ed for the most vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies, vul­ner­a­ble be­ing mea­sured pure­ly in fi­nan­cial terms.