Group Home ready, special adults await admission
More than 25 persons with disabilities and their families staged a silent protest against the UT Administration near the new Group Home in Sector 31 here today.
The building of Group Home is ready and furnished. But despite multiple reminders, the UT Administration has not recruited any staff and vocational instructors to date. No admission or inauguration date has been fixed yet.
“The families are desperately waiting and suffering,” says Tejpal Kaur, 70-year-old mother of an adult girl with intellectual disability.
The new Group Home building was completed and handed over to the UT Social Welfare Department in July. Built at a cost of Rs 35 crore, it has a capacity of 90 inmates with mental and intellectual disabilities and is claimed to be the biggest building for such purpose in the country. The UT Administration has missed multiple deadlines for starting admissions to the home.
The security deposit of Rs 20 lakh for each resident is unaffordable for most families. Even the EWS category applicants are being asked to pay a security deposit of Rs 5 lakh.
Families fear that most of them will not be able to apply for admission and the UT Administration will use the low occupancy as an excuse to divert the building for some other purpose.
“Who can afford a security deposit of Rs 20 lakhs? Should we sell our house and come on the road?” asked Satish Kumar, a senior citizen and father of an adult son with mental disability.
“Doesn’t a poor person with mental illness have the right to live in the Group Home? The UT Administration is not charging any fee or security deposit from the EWS residents of the Senior Citizens Home, Sector 15, why this discrimination with the disabled EWS persons for the new Group Home?” asked Jagdish Singh, 62-year-old father of an adult with mental disability belonging to the EWS category.
