Dear Pranavji, Yes I do agree with you to design programs for blind beggars but I am not sure whether they will like it since there potential salaries will be much lower than their daily begging income. Of course, employment comes with higher status and dignity but I doubt they care. In answer to your quote: We assigned multiple tasks which are below. Let me tell you that we are a packaging company specialized in corrugated and solid board packaging. We are a moderately bigger company. 1: counting. As we are in to retail and consumer product packaging, we made them to count10, 25, 50 and 100 boxes after they are made, tie a bundle and transport them. Blind people completely failed in both counting and tying or sealing a bundle of boxes and packing them to be transported. We trained blind people for so many days but still they cannot tie a bundle and also counting is inaccurate. For example, when we checked after these people performed the job, each bundle either had 6 or 7 extra or less. This will not only spoil our name with our prestigious customers who include farma, food and other retail industries but also make us lose our income. Already paper industry has sleek margins. My aim is to provide employment to uneducated and partially educated disabled people who is not limited to blind but I guess they don't understand our efforts. I can save 40% of our profits if I employ sited or nondisabled people but profits are secondary for us. Another area is responsibility. Based on my experience, blind people will never take lead or responsibility in doing the work. Unless we continuously tell them to do the regular work, they will not start doing the regular assigned work. For example our work day starts at 9 AM. I went to office late at 11 and ask why are you just sitting without work? My blind employees reply: "sir, you did not tell us anything." Are we still waiting for someone to tell us our work or take lead in asking? When I compare my nondisabled employees, they come to work, ask us about what has to be done and they will get to work. So why not blind people do the same? This is because they are lazy. And want free money. When we go in to competitive market for selling our brand, no one cares whether you are employing disabled or nondisabled people but customers only care high quality and cheaper pricing. But I believe these people do not understand that. Another area of concern is discipline. I never see my nondisabled people taking frequent leaves without intimation but blind people do all the time. They don't care to inform us if they are not coming. They show many silly reasons like have to go to hostile to collect free things like soap and paste even after getting married and not living in hostel's or go to collect pension and what not. They also site: "I have to take my blind wife to her previous hostel to collect free stuff" I don't understand why government hostels provide free things when they are working and not living in the hostels. We as entrepreneurs expect people to come to work when they sign up and we plan accordingly. I lost my credibility with my customers due to delay in delivering orders because of their inefficient work and also irregular and late attendance. If we ask them why you are delayed, blind people say: "my mother is not well to put me on the bus" If blind people do like this, when are we going to get inclusive opportunities? When are we going to prove that we are also the contributors of our economy and need social status? I guess NGO's have to figure this out. Problem for employment is accommodation. Blind people expect us to provide employment and also free accommodation. Is this demand possible? Maybe NGO's should figure how to help overcome this. Guys, please remember, we have ample opportunities if we can prove. Before blaming the society for not giving us the opportunity, we have to understand the root cause of the problem which lies with us. For example, I can recruit more than 30 disabled people if any NGO can identify and train them in basic skills and we can train about our work roles. Let me remind you all that we all were very much upset when the chief of NIVH Chennai spoke negatively about blind people. I do understand that given his role, duties and exposure, he can't talk in a public setting but some of his comments are actually right. I believe you all know this and at least your heart says so. For example, if once we help blind people out of our way, they expect the same thing every day in the work or outside work. If out of sympathy, I don't cut salary for late attendance for one month, they continuously repeat the same thing and expect us to not cut the salary. They never try to be independent. Another thing is demanding nature. I see this all the time. Blind people demand for extra privileges just because they are blind not qualified enough. Think about it. If blind people want, there is nothing we can't achieve. We have many role models who have achieved great milestones. Let me remind you all that we pay higher salaries than the industry average. We are also working on a micro business model through which we would like to work with disabled entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs', cooperative groups and other miner organizations. We would like to guide, mentor and fund their business units. We can't recruit everyone due to optimal foot print (maximum number of people per plant) so this will be a great opportunity for blind entrepreneurs to show their skills even without funding. Another example: We have a two ply corrugation production line on which we have a technical operator. We need two helpers to pick up the two ply corrugated boards coming out of the machine and properly stack them. Even here, blind people failed very badly. This work is completely comfortable and accessible. They know where the sheets fall and they don't even have to search for sheets. Sheets will come to their hand. Given extensive training, they failed. I am not sure where blind people can be successful if they can't do these simple tasks. Another example: we assigned them pasting operation which is really easy job. Basically, two ply corrugated board will be passed through the pasting and gluing machine and the machine will apply glue. Then the person other side should take the board and stick top layer of paper to make it three ply or five ply. Here we trained blind person to pass the board in to the machine, blind people to pick up the sheet and stick top layer and another person to properly stack the pasted sheets for drying. This is very much accessible and easy job but blind people failed other than one girl who is wonderful! She handles our pasting operation, packaging operation and also cutting operations. Paper comes in reams and role form and we use automatic cutter to cut paper in to multiple sizes. So most blind people failed in tying cut sheets in to different bundles and also pick up the cut sheets from the machine. But this blind girl is amazing. She does the work without any issue. She knows when the machine is not properly cutting in to appropriate size. She can handle the machine with no problem. She knows where each part of the machine is located and how to handle. She has been working with us for about a year now and we are happy with her performance. I can understand blind people not knowing counting if they are not educated but most people who failed are from PG and M.A and graduation. I really don't understand how these people are passing professional degrees without knowing basic counting. I hope this answers the kind of work and sources of failure. Please note, all my observations and comments are based on our real experiences and not reflective of the larger community in general. Regards,
-----Original Message----- From: Pranav Lal [mailto:pranav....@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:46 AM To: presidentsrika...@gmail.com; 'AccessIndia: a list for discussing accessibility and issues concerning the disabled.' Subject: RE: [AI] Blind Beggars in Bangalore Hi Srikanth, I in no way implied that blind people should just be given higher salaries. They have to perform. There is a problem here. They are not qualified to earn higher salaries and are probably not interested in acquiring those qualifications. The way I see the issue working is something like this. 1. Determine the salaries at which beggars will find it more lucrative to work. 2. Map that to qualifications. 3. Launch programs to train said beggers for qualifications which will earn them their desired salaries. I doubt this will address the core issue but it could provide guidance for NGOs dealing with this to run relevant training programs. <snip When I look at performance, blind people cannot even do 1/third work of a regular sited employee. PL] What kind of work are we talking about here? Pranav Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
