A wheelchair-bound para table tennis champion with a gold medal from Thailand Open 2013 has no job that the state can offer. The 31-year-old has to climb three floors to be coached for free in a private complex in Madurai.

Coaches in a government playground turned her away after she didn't have the money to pay them, she says. If it is difficult for people with disabilities to find a job, it's equally harrowing for those who did manage to get a job under the government quota.

Visually impaired Aruna Devi, holding an M Phil, is an assistant revenue officer. She complains they are kept idle with no work or training and completely neglected at the work place.

"Disabled people are being kept handicapped. We want our skills to be utilized", she says. Bhavani Kamakshi, who also suffers visual impairment, will retire in three years from a government job that she has been doing for the last 25 years with no promotion. Such stories of grief and neglect came alive when the disabled from all over the state gathered today in Chennai.

More than 100 people had a day-long orientation ahead of their meeting with Prasanna Kumar Pincha, the chief commissioner for persons with disabilities. The Tamil Nadu Handicapped Federation Charitable Trust and the State Forum for Rights of All Women with Disabilities also submitted a memorandum to him asking for their rights to be safeguarded.

"We took up issues of our rights concerning education, health and livelihood and the chief commissioner has promised to take up particular issues with the state commission", says T Mageswari, secretary, state forum for rights of all women with disabilities.

A geologist was among the gathering, having suffered a spinal cord injury because of an accident that left him with 90% disability. A former researcher with the Central Institute of Mining and Research in Jharkhand, he was transferred, on his request, to Chennai after his accident.

He now works as a librarian at the Central Leather Research Institute. "I am put up in a library now, which is a major compromise." Fed up with having to repeatedly demand more work he is capable of, he now takes up the cause of those suffering disabilities due to spinal cord injuries.

Source: Times of India