The Bangladesh Visually Impaired People’s Society on Wednesday demanded specific government policy to take all the visually impaired children to schools.
The demand was made at a press conference at the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity.
Speakers at the briefing said it would not be possible to ensure primary education for all children by 2015 to achieve millennium development goals in the field of education, keeping aside the children with disabilities.
Though the education ministry is responsible for ensuring education for all children, the schools for the education of the visually despaired students in the district headquarters are maintained by the social welfare ministry, they said, demanding that the schools should be brought under the education ministry.
They alleged that the mainstream schools often do not show their interest to admit the visually impaired children to their schools.
They demanded that the visually impaired children should be brought into the mainstream education and provided with Braille equipment and audio books free of cost, eye check-up for children with short sight and necessary educational apparatus for them, special quota for appointment of visually impaired teachers in every mainstream school.
They also demanded that the school infrastructure should be disabled people-friendly and allocation for providing stipend for the disabled students should be increased.
