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Demanding that the government should provide community assistance and personal support services free of charge, disabled people took out a pressure rally in Kathmandu on Tuesday. 60 people with disabilities, including wheelchair users, gathered at Shanti Watika and protested through Bhadrakali to Maitighar Mandla.
Keeping this demand, Deepak Bhandari of Tanahun is on death row at Shanti Watika. He started an indefinite sit-in from 6th of March. On March 14, an agreement was reached between the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens and Bhandari to address the demand. According to the agreement, it was said that community support and personal support services will start from May 1. For this, a three-member committee was formed and a draft report of the necessary programs and standards was prepared. But saying that the report was not implemented, Bhandari started a hunger strike from May 18.
The Constitution, the Act on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2074, Regulations 2077 and the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006, to which Nepal is a party state, provide provisions for the provision of helpers or protectors for persons with total or severe disabilities and priority in state service facilities. KC, a rights activist working in the field of intellectual disabilities, said that the situation where people with disabilities have to come to the streets to get services under the policy is unfair. "All the staff members, politicians, and the cabinet inside Sindhbar should know that disabled people also have rights and that they should be treated like other citizens," she said.
Similarly, Rishi Dhakal, the founding president of Spinal Palsy Group Nepal, said that the government delayed in implementing the agreement, so they were forced to take to the streets for pressure. "The government does not seem to be serious," he said. Autism and multiple disabilities, hearing impaired will also benefit from community support services program.
After Tuesday's rally, there was a discussion between women ministers, secretaries and joint secretaries. Women's Minister Bhagwati Choudhary requested to postpone the program of dharna and hunger strike as they are serious about this matter but it is taking time to work procedurally. She said that since this service is connected with the budget expenditure, it is taking time to proceed with the file in the Ministry of Finance. In the agreement of March 14, it was said that community support and personal support services will be started with 11 people with total disabilities. However, Minister Choudhary said that it is taking time as they are going to make a procedure to include those with complete and severe disabilities from all over the country who cannot go about their daily lives without assistance and need protection. Participating in the
discussion, the member of the National Assembly, Padam Pariyar, said that the government has not shown diligence in meeting the demands that have been raised since a decade and a half ago. "I am in the National Assembly representing the disabled, everyone has hope, I have been raising the issue in the Parliament as well, the government has not shown any sensitivity," he said, who has a normal disability.
He said that he is waiting for the fulfillment of the promise made by the women minister to bring the struggling disabled people to the cabinet meeting for a decision by next Thursday. The National Human Rights Commission has also issued a press release on Monday and urged all three levels of government to coordinate and implement the agreement reached between people with disabilities and the government of Nepal.
