(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The 25000-odd visually impaired men and women in Gujarats largest city Ahmedabad have been given free transport facility in the high-speed Bus Rapid Transport Service (BRTS) buses.
From the World Differently-abled Day on December 3 other people with physical disabilities are also being offered 40 per cent concession on tickets in the spick-and-span BRTS buses.
While the sightless now use a yellow smart card to travel on the eye-catching BRTS buses free of cost other differently-abled commuters carry a pink smart card which allows them to buy tickets at concessional rates.
The highly-popular BRTS which has been making a loss of Rs25 million every month has a dedicated corridor of 82km in the city on which 160 buses serve more than 130000 passengers every day. Only two months ago the Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled Gujarat government which had slapped a blanket ban on recruitment of visually-impaired people in teaching jobs finally agreed to absorb them as teaching assistants in the reserved category for the disabled.
According to Dr Bhushan Punani executive secretary of the Blind People’s Association (BPA) even completely blind and deaf job-hunters who were not considered eligible for teaching assistants’ posts so far will now be able to apply and the schools assigned to them will also be given the necessary infrastructure.
The blind are seeing light at the end of the tunnel as the state government plans to recruit 200000 people in the near future with Gujarat’s first woman Chief Minister Anandi Patel.
maheshkhaleejtimes.com
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