Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

When peo­ple are ca­pa­ble of see­ing a dis­abled cit­i­zen as a reg­u­lar per­son, T&T will be on the way to be­com­ing a ma­ture so­ci­ety. Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing said so at the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion's launch of its Low Vi­sion Aid Pro­gramme. The launch took place on Fri­day at the as­so­ci­a­tion's head­quar­ters on Duke Street in Port-of-Spain. Around 50 peo­ple clas­si­fied as hav­ing low vi­sion re­ceived spe­cial hand-held op­ti­cal de­vices to as­sist them in the per­for­mance of every­day tasks.

Lee Sing con­grat­u­lat­ed the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­ers in­volved in putting the pro­gramme to­geth­er, say­ing the ini­tia­tive sep­a­rat­ed prim­i­tive so­ci­eties from pro­gres­sive ones.

He said: "This morn­ing is a spe­cial mo­ment be­cause it is set against a back­drop of on­go­ing bar­barism in this coun­try, where every minute of the day some­one is be­ing killed for ab­solute­ly no rea­son."Lee Sing likened the preva­lence of sense­less killings in T&T to what oc­curs in Pak­istan and parts of the Con­go in Africa.

He said the so­lu­tion to the crime sit­u­a­tion was "en­sur­ing that peo­ple who are not gain­ful­ly em­ployed in work or study are made to do things pro­duc­tive."He said the pro­vi­sion of vi­sion aids to mem­bers of the vi­su­al­ly im­paired com­mu­ni­ty was just one way of en­sur­ing they were giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens.Lee Sing al­so apol­o­gised on be­half of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion for fail­ing to pro­vide the types of side­walks and roads nec­es­sary for pedes­tri­ans who are blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

He said he was aware that vi­su­al­ly im­paired peo­ple re­quired spe­cial­ly-de­signed pave­ments to en­sure their safe­ty while trav­el­ling around the cap­i­tal, but the $20 mil­lion which the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived from Gov­ern­ment was not enough to ad­dress all the in­fra­struc­tur­al needs of the city.In his re­marks, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said that with 240 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with low vi­sion through­out the world, it was im­por­tant to en­sure they en­joyed the same op­por­tu­ni­ties as oth­er cit­i­zens.Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment would part­ner with mem­bers of the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty in their quest for so­cial jus­tice."The chain of T&T can on­ly be strong when the weak­est of its links is strength­ened, em­pow­ered and giv­en en­cour­age­ment," he said.

He al­so said his min­istry was work­ing to­wards en­sur­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of so­ci­ety had equal en­joy­ment of hu­man rights and were en­cour­aged to be self-re­liant.In Jan­u­ary, he said, work be­gan on the con­struc­tion of a spe­cialised cen­tre for the dis­abled at a cost of $11.5 mil­lion. He said the cen­tre, be­ing built in Carlsen Field in Cen­tral Trinidad, will be the first of its kind in T&T.He said al­so the cen­tre will al­low dis­abled cit­i­zens ac­cess to re­sources and con­sul­ta­tion in parts of the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca, Asia, North Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed King­dom.With suf­fi­cient fund­ing and sup­port, he said, the min­istry hopes to build sim­i­lar cen­tres through­out T&T.