A Massive Initiative By The Indian Government For The 'Differently Abled' Persons

Source: Economic Times | Image Courtesy: ablemagazine

There is a news to cheer up the differently abled persons as 75 railway stations, 5000 public buildings and all international airports will be made disabled-friendly by July 2016, while domestic terminals by July 2019.

As part of Accessible India Campaign government has started auditing 27 International airports and 75 railway stations to identify areas that need to be improved and made disabled friendly. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which launched the campaign in October, said that nearly 4500 buildings across big cities were to be made completely accessible.

The list contains the name of some of the major airports across the cities such as Srinagar, Amritsar, Jaipur, New Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Goa, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Port Blair, and Bhopal. The campaign will be launched on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities scheduled on December 3.

The deadline of July 2016 has been set by the government within which retrofit-fitting of international airports and railways station has to be done. An initiation will be made in 26 large cities and state capitals where the 50 most important government buildings will be identified for accessibility audit.

As reported by Economic Times, a senior official said the spadework was already started even before the formal launch. The exercise of retrofitting buildings, airports and stations should be used to get a blueprint that can be used to make existing private buildings, especially commercial buildings, also disabled friendly. Let’s hope that even companies would adopt the trend of making privately owned buildings disabled friendly. The government must ensure that everything fall in place within the stipulated time frame stated by the government.