New Delhi: A Parliamentary committee has expressed "dismay" at the lack of schemes for rehabilitation of homeless people with disabilities and asked the National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation (NHFDC) to prepare comprehensive schemes for them.
"The Committee appreciate the initiatives and new schemes launched by the NHFDC for the betterment and upliftment of persons with disabilities.
"The Committee is, however, dismayed to note that while formulating new schemes and initiatives, no scheme has been envisaged for the upliftment and empowerment of homeless and destitute disabled persons who live on streets and do not have homes and families," said the Committee on the functioning of NHFDC in its report which was submitted to Rajya Sabha recently.
"The Committee desire that it is imperative to formulate comprehensive schemes and programmes for this segment of disabled population, who are neither included in the Census of disabled nor get any benefit of schemes meant for the disabled, so as to rehabilitate and extricate them from destitution," it said.
NHFDC was set up in January 1997 as a non-profit company under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and provides financial assistance to disabled people for a wide range of income generating activities.
The panel said it was imperative to include the homeless PwDs in the census to ascertain the exact number of disabled persons. It said the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment should urge the Registrar General of India for inclusion of homeless disabled persons in the Census.
The Ministry has started the process of implementing a Unique Disability Identification (UDID) project with a view to creating a national database of persons with disabilities and issue Unique Disability Identification Card to every PwD.
Under this programme, PwDs will be registered through a web based programme implemented by organising camps even at block level across the country.
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