By ALDWIN QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all. — Helen Keller quotes

In a higher form of society, the capacity of each individual to contribute for the upliftment of the lives of the citizen is much appreciated and mobilized. The actual need and necessity of each individual is respected and addressed by the state as it was established to do so. The people in that society live a life to the fullest as they are contented.

Persons with disabilities for instance enjoy a much-respected life as thay are regarded by the society as essential part of the state. Their disabilities are no longer burden for them to live side by side with the people without disabilities, they also live a normal life.

Whatever work they can do, the state will encourage them to do it for their confidence that they too are contributing much to the society. Whatever they need, the state will look into it regardless of who thay are or whatever their disabilities are. The state also always has the concern on how to rehabilitate their disability to make their mobility more comfortable and will not really be a burden for them.

In the present system of the society, persons with disabilities have a hard time coping with the world of “people without disabilities” who claim they are normals. They seem to be punished by their fellows because of their physical situation. Everyday, they suffer from discrimination and most of the times being called not by their names but by their disabilities. They are treated like a lower form of living thing. Most of the time, they are hard up at getting employed as many consider them as non-productive assets to businesses, just burdens. In other words, they are looked down-on as useless.

Some businesses do accept them for employment but only temporarily as they prefer the “abled” ones. Some of them who had been able to get higher education are in top positions, but they are only a few. Still, many of them are left helpless and forced to eat their pride and beg for money because if they do not do it, they will die of starvation in this world where the law is the survival of the fittest.

What makes their situation harder is how the state or government look at them. Although there are programs even if not really serious ones, they make no difference. As most officials do not care how their people will not starve, they do not care about the welfare of the persons with disabilities. Many times, they are used by corrupt officials to solicit money from organizations local and abroad.

While some of the concerned individuals and organizations help them, the state officials can only pose that they too care. They pose with the persons with disabilities in front of the cameras to announce that they are helping them.

In a new form of a society, this persons with disabilities will no longer be discriminated, no longer will they have a hard time in looking for jobs, no longer will have a hard time achieving an education, no longer will have a hard time to raise their families, no longer will have a hard time to eat.

In a higher form of a society, the state will not have to wait for the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week every month of July just to show its “concern” to the persons with disabilities boasting that in accessible structures, everybody is abled. Because everyday, the state looks after the welfare of each of its citizens regardless of what he looks like. This will be a true accesible state that everybody is abled.

A suggestion from one of the concerned individuals is true, it is not the person with disability who should be rehabilitated but the society.

All the people like us are We, And everyone else is They. — Rudyard Kipling, We and They, 1926# nordis.net