Srinagar, Oct 14: First time in the history of Composite Regional Center (CRC), a Kashmiri has been appointed the first Director of the, which was earlier run by officers of central social welfare department, with the additional charge of its CRC State Head.
The order of Dr. Mir Zaffar Iqbal’s appointment as the first full time Director of the Center was issued on Tuesday, by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Government of India.
Dr. Zaffar formally joined on Tuesday as the first full time Head of this prestigious Center, which looks after the interests of the physically challenged people.
Pertinently, Dr. Zaffar has been serving in CRC for the last twenty years as a senior faculty and is very well versed with the issues related to physically challenged people, problems faced by them and their rehabilitation.
CRC runs various programmes for the welfare, treatment and rehabilitation of the physically challenged and persons with special needs, which include various graduate and post graduate courses, related to the subject, besides providing clinical treatment, physiotherapy and rehabilitation of such people.
Dr. Zaffar, while expressing his pleasure, for being a Kashmiri to be appointed, as the first full time Director of the Center, told news agency KDC that his 17 year long experience in the institute will come quite handy for the purpose of him being appointed for the post.
He said, “My first priority will be to provide a barrier free environment for the persons, facing different kinds of physical challenges.”
“Among the priorities, one is to coordinate with various departments, to provide facilitates needed by physically challenged people,” he said further.
Dr. Zaffar said, “Some of these facilities include ramps in every government office, where persons with special needs and differently abled, who use wheel chairs, could enter and exit easily.”
He added that another priority was to provide facilities, where visually impaired people could have a system to access the internet easily, so they could independently and without anybody’s help access the benefits of information technology, including education.
Dr Zaffar said that he focused on fulfilling the objectives given to him by the government and to further improve the education system in the institute.
“The institute will work with close linkage with the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) and various Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to strengthen the facilities needed by the people with special needs and attention”, he added. (KDC)
