MANSEHRA: A non-governmental organisation has provided psychosocial support to people with disabilities to bring them out of the traumas of being neglected by their families and society as a whole.
“We have been removing hurdles in the way of PWDs to avail financial and other benefits by providing them voluntary services in making all sorts of documents, but being neglected by their families and society, and poverty is also a big trauma for them,” Mukhtar Javed, the executive director of Welfare Association Jared, told a presser here on Friday.
He said that WAJ, under the HOPE’87 BeST-RAHAT initiative, was providing civil documentation services, psychosocial support, and counselling services to PWDs in Haripur. “We have also been providing various forms of support to community members with disabilities through a qualified psychologist at WAJ’s Protection Resource Centre (PRC), established in UC Dheenda, to provide psychosocial counselling and help them return to a normal life,” Javed said.
He said that WAJ refers cases to the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, the Social Welfare Department, the RHC KTS health facility, the International Rescue Committee, and Handicap International by providing medical consultations arranged online with specialist doctors based in Peshawar in complicated cases.
The executive director said that until the existing barriers of identity documents, such as National Identity Cards or birth registration, which deprive PWDs of government services, social protection programmes and healthcare addressed, their vulnerability and discrimination of being neglected would never end.
Javed, who is also the chairman of Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), said that they had provided civil documentation services to hundreds of men, women and children up to 60 years in Dheenda Union Council in Haripur.
