SHILLONG: Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Thaawarchand Gehlot on Thursday informed that the Ministry had decided to set up one of the five national sports stadium of international standard for differently abled in Meghalaya at an estimated cost of over Rs 200 crore beside setting up of an Composite Regional Centre in the state.
Speaking at Samajik Adhikarita Shivir aids and assistive devices distribution camp for the differently abled person under the Assistance to Disabled Person here on Thursday, he said that the idea of building sports infrastructure came after state Chief Minister approached him with a proposal and provided 50 acres of land for the same.
He informed that the detail project report (DPR) will be prepared in sometime and this stadium which would be of international standard should come up before National Games 2022.
He said that this would enable the state to host Olympics for the differently abled. He also said that the Ministry would set up a Composite Regional Centre (CRC) in the state and would start work once the space was made available.
Talking about the camp, he said that since 2014, more than 7300 of similar camps have been organised in the country where 12 lakh beneficiaries have been given aids even as he added goods worth Rs 650 crores have been distributed among the beneficiaries.
He said that the Ministry had now come up with a new Act for Persons with Disability and the Act has 21 categories of disability whereas the previous Act had only 7.
Stating that PWDs often face difficulties in utilising benefits of their identity cards in different states, he added that the Government have decided to come up with universal card and all PWDs in the country would have their universal card by next year.
In the function, goods worth Rs 3.49 crores were distributed among 4635 beneficiaries and in Tura, more than 2700 beneficiaries would be provided aids worth Rs 3.44 crores on Friday
We will organise these camps in other district as well,” he said.
Earlier, Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma said that there were challenges for PWDs and he had several meetings with the PWDs and he was informed many schemes were there for them in paper but not implemented on ground.
He said that the policy for PWDs must be implemented
Conrad Sangma said, that the idea for the stadium started three to four months back when he had met the Minister and discussed an array of issues and received good response and support.
He said that this stadium would also be put to use during the National Games 2012. Pointing out that there will only be five such sport centres throughout the country, he said that the state was lucky to have the stadium.
Earlier, Social Welfare Minister, Kyrmen Shylla said that as per the 2011 census, there are 44317 PWDs in Meghalaya and 6751 of them are in urban areas.