For the last one year, Haryana’s Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities has been meeting visitors in the parking lot of his office in Chandigarh’s Sector 17. For, his office is on the third floor and has no lift or ramp leading up to it, making it inaccessible to many wheelchair-bound visitors who come to him with grievances.
Commissioner Phool Chand Yadav, who is himself visually impaired, has been taking the stairs — 59 steps — ever since he took over the post on December 29 last year. Haryana has about five lakh people with disabilities.
The office has been functioning from its present location for the last four years. “I have tried my best to shift the office to the ground floor of any building. Sarkar ke saamne kisi ki nahi chalti (Nobody is effective before the government). A person in a constitutional post cannot even protest,” said Yadav, who claims to have written several letters to the Haryana Chief Secretary.
He requested the government to allot two rooms on the ground floor — either in the Haryana secretariat or the mini-secretariat in sector 17 near the Inter State Bus Terminus — so that his office would become accessible to people in need.
On May 12, the Chief Secretary’s office wrote that “at present, no space is available in government buildings in Chandigarh, and no other space is available with secretariat establishment”.
Also marked on the mail was the department of Social Justice and Empowerment, which was advised to arrange an office “at the earliest” — either on the ground floor or accessible by lift or ramp.
When contacted by the The Indian Express, Additional Chief Secretary S K Gulati said efforts were on to find a suitable office.
“Hopefully we will shift the office by December-end. Not only the office of the Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, but our department’s office in the same building also needs to be shifted before March next as per court orders as we cannot pay the market rent (of both offices). We are working on it and the Haryana Urban Development Authority has suggested a location in sector-3, Panchkula,” said Gulati.
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