State faces wheelchair shortage after bulk-buying for polls

Ranchi: There is an acute shortage of wheelchairs across the state, particularly in Ranchi, after the government bought them in bulk to help persons with disability (PwD) cast their votes with ease during the general elections, which is scheduled to start from April 29. According to the election office, there are 1,20,031 PwD voters across the state.
In Ranchi, the district administration officials said they have procured around 600 wheelchairs and will be used for providing assistance to PwD and elderly voters, who face mobility issues. Priyanka Srivastava, additional director of social security wing at district administration, who is taking care of the PwD cell, on said the Ranchi parliamentary constituency has close to 9,859 registered PwD voters. She said, “There are 9,859 persons with disability voters and we have procured two wheelchairs per panchayat for Ranchi district alone so that the voters don’t face problems on polling day.”

Retailers of surgical and medical equipment across the state capital have conceded to the crisis. Sudhir Roy, proprietor of Sudhir Surgicals at Tharpakhna, said, “I sell three to four wheelchairs per week and we keep enough stock for six months. However, we sold around 40 to 50 units at once to vendors around three to four days ago. I am left with no stock. We have requisitioned for more stocks with our suppliers in Mumbai and Chennai, but it will take a few weeks’ time to reach here.”

Pradeep Jaiswal of Praveen Brothers, another supplier at Albert Ekka Chowk, said, “The shortage is not only in Ranchi, but across the state due to heavy demand for the elections. We have placed fresh orders but I am not sure how soon they will arrive. My stocks come from Taiwan and China, and a Chennai-based stockist supplies them to me.”

A Ratu Road-based shop owner, Rakesh Gupta, said that though suppliers are taking orders for wheelchairs, they aren’t committing on the time of delivery. “Currently, I don’t have any wheelchair in stock. In the last couple of days, several customers in need had to return empty handed,” he said.

Officials of the Koderma district administration is crowd-sourcing wheelchairs through the administration’s home-grown app ‘Election Management Koderma’ for the polling day. Koderma DC Bhuvnesh Pratap Singh said: “The app has a segment where individuals can register themselves as PwD Sahayaks (helpers) and also donate wheelchairs for the booths at the same time. Till date, we have managed to crowd fund over 250 wheelchairs in the district through the app — which is one wheelchair for every two booths.”

(With inputs from Debjani Chakraborty)