Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, Goa Industries Minister Mahadev Naik and MLA Sidharth Kuncalienkar also attended the event.
Specially-abled children from different schools and NGOs along with their parents witnessed the event in large numbers; many of the students took active participation in the cultural activities held at the event and also organised an exhibition of products made by them.
Yvonne Gomes, a parent said, “we are grateful to the Government of Goa for this event being organized and creating awareness, but also a lot of things are yet to happen for the benefit of these children as there are many schemes not yet availed by the children as the parents are not aware of these schemes and should be approached by the government.”
DRAG stated that there are 25,000-30,000 specially-abled persons in Goa and the organization’s aim is to reach out to all of them. On behalf of DRAG, the chief minister inaugurated a magazine and released a bunch of balloons to announce their completion of 12 years.
Eighteen specially-abled persons were felicitated for achieving medals at the Special Olympics held in New York this year along with Avelino D’Sa, National award winner for being an activist for disabled persons.
Parsekar said, “The Government of Goa will do everything possible for the benefit of these children. Differently-abled children should be addressed by specially-abled, as all of them are doing wonderful jobs. Many of them are also employed in Government offices.”
The Goa Association of the deaf also voiced their issue at the event, by a written letter addressed to the Chief Minister of Goa, to focus on the jobless but capable of working deaf people, more than 2000 hearing impaired persons are not yet employed as the Government has not followed the law of appointing 1% for citizens suffering from hearing impairment.
Industries Minister Mahadev Naik said, “The Government is going to do everything possible to change the mindsets of all the people completely towards disability and to help the specially-abled children. Employment of specially-abled persons will also be kept in consideration and soon a drastic change will be seen for the benefit of these specially-abled children.”
