LAHORE, PAKISTAN: Nov 11: A petition has been filed in the Lahore High Court challenging the condition of written test by the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) for visually impaired persons for the post of Junior Special Education Teachers.

The Pakistan Association for The Blinds filed the petition on Thursday seeking directions to the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) to make the appointments only on the basis of interview as per previous practice. The PPSC has scheduled written test for Friday (today) from 3pm to 5pm.

Naveed Anjum, Amir Ashraf and seven other visually impaired persons, through Advocate Aftab Noshahi, submitted that, in July, the PPSC had invited applications for 22 posts of Junior Special Education Teacher (BS-16) in Punjab. Previously, they pointed out, the appointments were made only through interviews but this time the PPSC had imposed the condition of written test to qualify for interview. They said 169 disabled persons had applied for the 22 posts and, out of them, 25 were visually impaired.

They argued that the disabled suffering from disabilities, like mental retardation, hearing impairment, physical deformity, etc, could prove their abilities in a better way through written test as compared with visually impaired people. In this way, blind candidates were being discriminated against. They said the examiner had provided them helpers during the written exams but they could not write properly, thus failed them.

They said the appointments had already been made for other three categories for disabled persons and no written test was conducted. They said JSET were required to teach visually impaired children and only a visually impaired teacher could properly understand their problems. They said they were qualified in Braille and could train the blind children in a better way. They prayed to the court to issue directions to the PPSC and the Secretary Special Education to remove the condition of written test from the process of the appointments and consider them as eligible candidates.

Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk