Bhubaneswar: Revising its earlier provision of free laptop distribution to Plus III visually challenged students in the second and third years of graduation, the state government has now decided to extend the benefits of the scheme to such categories of students pursuing from the first year itself.
The state government will provide free laptops to visually-impaired students from Plus III first year
A decision to this effect has been taken by the department of social security and empowerment of persons with disabilities (SSEPD).
The state government, in order to fulfill the mandate under the Right of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, had launched the ‘free laptop to visually impaired students’ scheme last year to provide laptops free of cost to visually challenged students in the second and third years of graduation and in post-graduation also.
However, as per the demands of the association for the blind and other groups concerned, the state government from this year onwards has decided to include the first year batch of students also to provide free laptops with JAWS software.
Meanwhile, the SSEPD department has also sought enhancement of budget under the scheme for distribution of free laptops to the higher number of eligible students.
According to an official of the department, the state government in 2016-17 had made a budgetary provision of Rs 50 lakh for the scheme. However, the budget was insufficient and out of 189 applications received, the department could purchase and distribute only 112 laptops to the visually challenged students.
In the current fiscal (2017-18), the department has sought an increase in the budget outlay of the scheme from Rs 50lakh to Rs 2crore for distribution of free laptops to 250 beneficiaries.
Notably, the scheme had been launched for visually impaired students pursuing higher education, including technical/professional courses, who find it hard to continue with such study without special aids like computers with compatible software.
With the state government’s new plans, more visually impaired students will receive benefits.
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