CHENNAI: Ten visually impaired people have been waiting for over five years to get a permanent house in one of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board tenements or any state housing projects. Despite several petitions and pleas, the families are now shuttling from one place to another in search of a house as they are increasingly finding it difficult to afford.
B Athikesavan, a 60-year-old visually impaired daily wager, said his situation became worse after the pandemic. He lives in a one-room house with his blind sister in Medavakkam. He usually earned around 115 a day, depending on the work he gets, but since the lockdown he hardly earns anything.
"I briefly moved to a relatives house after we were forced out of the place we stayed before because we had no money," he said.
G Kasi, another daily wager has also been going through a similar ordeal. "It is difficult for a person without disability to find a job now. Imagine our plight," said Kasi who lives with his wife and four young children in Agharam, Medavakkam. His wife is also visually impaired. "How many times do we have to appeal? I'm losing hope," he said.
The Rights to Persons with Disabilities Act mandates every state to ensure 5% reservation for the disabled in housing and development schemes.
"We wrote to the CM cell first and were then asked to go to the TNSCB. Officials there asked us to approach the department of differently abled and we were yet again asked to go to the TNSCB. We have submitted petitions everywhere, but never received any response," said Athikesavan who with the others went to all these offices again this week.
Similar is the plight of those with locomotor and other disabilities.
R Thangavel, 72, has been knocking on all doors with a hope to find a permanent home. He has been forced to change his house 12 times in a year because his son has severe intellectual disability. "Nobody wants to give us a house. But the officials say that there is no separate allotment for us and that the state housing projects are also not disabled-friendly."
However, senior officials from the differently abled department said they are in talks with the TNSCB and are receiving proposals from people and experts in the field who want to create a separate housing project with assisted living facilities for the disabled, in the state.
Officials from TNSCB said that they are enumerating the number of disabled in need of housing. "Once we get a correct figure we'll start the allotment," the official said.
Arjunshankar N, a disabled rights activist said that when the people went to the CM cell they were told that the first housing preference would be given to those living on encroached land in the TNSCB tenements. "And what about other projects? The disabled do not get any allotment anywhere. And they are not asking for any favours, just their right," he said.