Not 100% disabled? No transfer

CHENNAI: If you’re not on a wheel chair, don’t use crutches or are not 100 per cent bli­nd, consider yourself unlucky! That is what School Education department officials told differently-abled teachers, refusing them transfers that they had applied for.Last Wednesday (September 21), the school education department held ‘transfer counselling’ for the disabled at different centres across the state. Strictly following a 1981 Government Order of the Education department which listed these three criteria as the only ones to entitle a disabled person for transfer, officials of the department rejected several cases. This despite the Disability Act, 1995 clearly stating that a person with any type of disability, holding a National Disability ID card,  and having “40 per cent disability” was eligible for all concessions and welfare measures meant for the group.The case of Velayutham (32), a teacher with 60-70 per cent visual impairment, is one such. He works in Wallajabad Government Higher Secondary School while his wife, who is orthopaedically disabled, works at a private company in Chennai. Citing the difficulty faced by them, whereby his wife had to travel to Chennai everyday from Wallajabad, he sought a transfer to Chennai to make their life a little easier. But the officials refused him the transfer on grounds that he was not 100 per cent blind.Similar is the case with Kesavan (33) from Andipatti, whose right leg is affected by polio, travels 110 km everyday on a modified two-wheeler through a mud road across hilly tracks to reach the Gandhigramam Panchayat Union Primary School where he is the Head Master. “When I asked the officials to transfer me to the plains because travelling everyday these many kilometres in the hilly areas is very difficult with one good leg, they said that since I am not on a wheel chair and am able to drive a vehicle, I should  manage without a transfer.”