Disabled kids denied pension in Nuapada

Saturday, 27 July 2019 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA

Call it administrative apathy or lack of facility to get Aadhar, UDID, tribal children in the remote hinterlands of Nuapada district have to finally bear the brunt.

Manas Adbong (7) is a disabled child of Michhapali village of Komna block. His father Laxman acquired a disability certificate for Manas, a few months ago, and made an application in Komna block office for disability pension, but it was yet to be approved even after a lapse of four months.

Ratna Majhi of Soseng village located in the Sunabeda plateau ran from pillar to post for several months with the 70 per cent disability certificate of his 7- year- old son Keshaba, requesting the officials for including his son in the disability pension scheme. He finally met the district Collector of Nuapada in a meeting held at Soseng two years ago and gave the original certificate to the Collector with the hope that the district head would forward the certificate to the concerned office. He is still waiting for that to happen even after two years.

Kapurchan Paharia, son of Phulsingh of Dhekunpani village of Sunabeda panchayat, has got a certificate with 65 per cent disability. He will not get any pension because his name has been wrongly mentioned as Kumarchan in the certificate.

Manisha Majhi (6), daughter of Tikman Majhi, is a native of Jamgaon village of Sunabeda panchayat. She was issued a certificate with 70 per cent disability in October 2013, but is yet to be included in the pension scheme till now. “I submitted the application in the panchayat after getting the certificate, and after five years, they say that the old certificate is not valid and I have to avail a new certificate for my child at Nuapada. Why should I go there again. They are cheats. How can a Government certificate be invalid,” asked Tikman. Further inquiry revealed that the child has to be registered for UDID (Unique Disability ID) to get pension benefit.

“There might be several such cases of exclusion in many remote villages of Nuapada district which should be identified immediately,” said Bidyut Mohanty, head of SPREAD, an NGO working in Nuapada district on child nutrition. The organisation had held a camp for the disabled children at Sunabeda a few weeks ago to train the parents on physiotherapy, where eleven children attended. When five of the cases were diagnosed cerebral palsy, three were diagnosed hemi parasis and the rest had locomotion disorder. One child had cerebral palsy with visual impairment.

It was marked from the description of medical history of the children by their parents that most of the children took birth at home and the mothers suffered from fever in their advance stage of pregnancy (eight of eleven) and none of them could avail medical treatment. The main cause of such problems is assumed by people to be lack of proper treatment of the mother and child.

“Now that a doctor has been posted in Sunabeda PHC, the people are feeling a little bit confident,” said Biju Jhankar of Sanbaheli village.

The children are deprived of pension because there is lack of facility to get the Aadhar and UDID done in Sunabeda, said Jugraj Chhatria, who was running a kiosk of UGB (Utkal Gramya Bank) at Sunabeda, which is now nonfunctional. “I could have helped the people here for registration in Aadhar, UDID and other online activities, including opening of bank account, but this system has crashed due to a lightning a year ago and the service provider is not repairing it,” rued Jugraj. He has lodged complaint with the UGB several times but no action has been taken.

The physiotherapy camp held by SPREAD at Sunabeda has helped parents of disabled children understand that they can help their children live better. “This should be held at regular interval, but unfortunately, Nuapada district has no DDRC (District Disability Rehabilitation Centre) to monitor such activities,” said SPREAD head Mohanty.