Festival for special children

LAHORE : The Lahore Businessmen Association for the Rehabilitation of Disabled (LABARD) organised LABARD Mela – 2020 on Saturday at Ghulam Jilani Park that was immensely enjoyed by special children from all over the City.

More than 5,000 special children belonging to various institutions took part in different activities at the LABARD Mela. The basic aim of holding the festival was to give encouragement to the special persons and make them useful citizens of society so that they could be able to play a positive role in their lives.

Addressing the participants, LABARD President Pervez Malik and Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Irfan Iqbal Sheikh said that it was duty of every citizen to play his/her role in the betterment of society. They said that over 10 per cent population of all the developing countries consisted of special persons that needed to be taken care of by the rest of the 90 per cent in the larger interests of whole society. They said that everyone should cooperate with the organisations like LABARD as around 200,000 physically -challenged people were waiting for help in the suburbs of Lahore.

While appreciating the LCCI role in making the event a big success, Pervez Malik said that the chamber was also extending big help to LABARD.

Both speakers said that there was a need to launch specific programmes for training and education of special persons.

LCCI President Irfan Iqbal Sheikh suggested holding LABARD Mela twice a year. He said, “The special persons possess god-gifted qualities. We all should make collective efforts for enhancing their skills so that they could become useful members of society.”

He said that law mandated that private sector and public sector employ special persons by 1 per cent and 2 percent, respectively, of their total workforce.

LCCI will motivate its member companies to show greater compliance to the law and would refer the interested members to contact job placement cell of LABARD to have suitable candidates. The physically-challenged children enjoyed the festival very much as many games and cultural activities were arranged for them.