The NDF, a wing of Social Welfare Council that deals with disability matters in the country, said more than 1500 people are in queue for wheelchairs.[break]
“We are trying to find donors to provide more than 1500 registered applicants with wheelchairs,” NDF´s manager Prachandaman Bajracharya said.
He said that everyday disabled people and their kin make rounds of NDF´s office in hopes to get wheelchair but return disappointed. “Last week we sent a person who had suffered spinal cord injury in a bike accident with an old wheelchair that was brought here for repair,” he said adding.
According to NDF, a wheelchair costs Rs 15,000 to 20,000 thousand which is beyond the reach of most of the physically impaired people. The NDF said its Physical Rehabilitation Centre (PRC) does not even have spare parts for maintenance of old wheelchairs. The NDF has to import wheelchair parts from abroad. Wheelchairs have to be replaced every three years. “Hundreds of disabled people who had already received wheelchairs earlier are now waiting for replacement and spare parts but we are yet to find donor agency,” Ramchandra Dahal, management officer at PRC said.
The NDF has also stopped providing scholarships to the disabled students since last two years. “Due to lack of fund we have stopped taking applications from disabled students seeking scholarship,” Bajracharya added. The NDF said the office is in crisis after its main donor Handicap International cut its assistance by 25 percent in 2011.
The office said that it even does not have money for producing artificial limbs and crutches. After the donor agency cut its assistance, NDF has decided to charge physically impaired people for services, categorizing them into four groups based on their economic status. The disabled who fall under ´A´ category has to pay 100 % for services, and those under ´B´ and ´C´ category will have to pay 50% and 25 % respectively.
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