The Government has set the target of imparting primary to higher secondary education to about 10,000 disabled children - visually, orthopaedically, mentally and hearing impaired - in 1999-2000.

According to government figures, there are nearly 25,000 disabled children, of whom about 16,500 (67 per cent) have so far no access to education. At present, about 6,800 disabled children are being provided education at 139 institutions - 125 run by NGOs on full grants and the rest run by the government.

In addition, 1,827 disabled children are enrolled under the scheme in regular schools in 13 districts - Ahmedabad, Kheda, Sabarkantha, Mehsana, Panchmahals, Valsad, Banaskantha, Junagadh, Rajkot, Vadodara, Kutch, Bharuch and Surendranagar.

The six districts to be covered are the Dangs, Amreli, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Surat and Jamnagar.

Surprisingly, the number of visually-impaired students enrolled in schools under the scheme is more than those in the other three categories, with Sabarkantha topping the list with 405, followed by Mehsana (248), Kheda (144) and Panchmahals (103).

In an exclusive chat with Express Newsline, Bipin Mehta, the project co-ordinator, IEDC Cell, says since there is no sufficient number of specially-trained teachers, the cell will train `normal' teachers through orientation bridge courses to meet the target.

Mehta says four batches of 25 teachers will be trained and ready by March 31 next, at a cost of over Rs 5 lakh, which will be borne by the Rehabilitation Council of India. There are five colleges which impart special training to teachers to educate disabled children. At present, 156 specially trained teachers are working under the IEDC programme.

Sudhir Mankad, ACS (Education), had expressed concern over special education (for the disabled) not receiving much attention in the State, at a regional seminar under the aegis of Asia and Pacific Programmes of Educational Innovation for Development (APEID) in Japan recently.

He said the main strategy of the State Education Department to cover disabled children was to expand the coverage of the IEDC scheme in the State. He stressed the need for involving more and more NGOs and was all praise for the Ahmedabad-based Blind Men's Association (BMA) providing technical and organisational support to the scheme. He said the government would provide encouragement and incentives to the Blind Men's Association and other organisations to set up or identify NGOs at the district and block-level, help them prepare the project proposals and get fund approved by the Central Government. The Government would also provide financial assistance for teaching and learning aids and other equipment.

The official said the Sabarkantha branch of the National Association for the Blind had so far rehabilitated about 1,500 blind in the district. Besides providing career counselling and deputing blind students to vocational institutions, it advances credit to them for setting up shops and taking up other professions in the district.