QUEEN'S ROAD: For 31-year-old Shaheen, every day is a struggle. From helping Bano, her 13-year-old daughter to get off bed to bathing her and helping her get dressed, Shaheen's life is all about endless responsibilities.
"Bano is visually and hearing impaired. We enrolled her into a school for blind children, but since she is hearing impaired too, they sent her back. The same thing happened at the school for hearing impaired children," Shaheen explains.
Shunned from both schools, Shaheen herself started teaching Bano sign language at home. "I have developed my own sign language. My daughter needs to learn to communicate," she says.
Bano is not an isolated case in the city. Mathru, an organisation which runs centres for children with total disability, had initially identified 28 such children in the city. "Sixteen children have been identified in D J Halli and 12 in the other parts of the city," says a volunteer. But this was just the tip of the iceberg.
This number, they say, was shockingly small. "We continue to identifying more such cases and have found that there are 40 more children in this category and we are trying to reach out to all of them," the volunteer said.
Parents say such children are completely neglected by educational institutions. "My son can't walk or move his hands. His neck does not remain straight. In special schools, they refuse to take care of him because he constantly needs care. And regular schools are not an option at all," explained Renu, mother of six-year-old Dilip.
The result: No schooling for any of them. Parents say repeated attempts to contact government authorities have yielded nothing.
"They don't even seem to care that there are children who fall into more than one category of disability. We need special instructors, special census and also equipment for their development," says Asma Khan, who has two children, Hamid (4) and Shoaib (6), who are totally disabled.
In D J Halli, Mathru runs a centre for such children. "We run the centre in a small room of a government school. In addition to space constraints, we have to deal with other children who are very insensitive too. Also, these children need different toilets and places which don't have sharp edges so that they don't hurt themselves and also sign language instructors. But there is no help from government either in creating infrastructure or giving financial help, " says Anotema who teaches the children.
(All names have been changed)