Members of the Ramanathapuram District Differently Abled Welfare Association on Monday presented a petition to the Collector demanding him to expedite distrituion of welfare assistance being implemented by the District Disabled Rehabilitation Office.

A group of persons led by M. Balamurugan, district secretary, met the Collector V. Arun Roy and stated that disabled people of various categories, including visually and physically handicapped and mentally retarded, visited the DDRO, respective taluk or other offices concerned regularly for airing their grievances. However, several of them were being made to run from one office to another for various reasons. They received poor response from the offices concerned.

Mr. Balamurugan said there were about 34,000 differently abled people in the district. The present system was inadequate to meet the grievances of them. There was a need to conduct a separate grievance meet for differently abled similar to the weekly grievance day.