BHUBANESWAR: The Women and Child Development department will soon begin a comprehensive survey to identify children with disabilities across all the 21 categories as identified under the Rights to Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016.
The department will carry out the exercise with the help of its anganwadi workers and the Social Security and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SSEPD) department. It will also ensure registration of the unidentified children with disabilities on the UDID portal, which is the national database for all Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), along with their socio-economic details.
Under the exercise, children with disabilities in the age group of 0 to 18 will be identified. For the purpose, the SSEPD department will spend Rs 5 crore.
The last time children with disabilities were surveyed in the state was during Census 2011 which had put the total population of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) at 12,44,402. The highest percentage of PwDs were found in the age group of 10 to 19 years (15.09 pc). According to reports, only two per cent of children with disabilities are in schools and 0.5 to 0.6 pc of them comprise girls.