The Malaysian Association for the Blind (MAB) has requested the government to set up an equipment technical assistance fund for the disabled to get access to the necessary equipment.

Proposing the idea to the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) today, MAB Exco deputy president and chairperson S Kulasegaran also said that education assistance for the visually impaired must be started at the kindergarten level.

“The children don’t get any allowance and their parents are too poor to send them to school so the children have to sit at home particularly in rural areas … we have to bring them out, get a proper education,” he said. 

In the half-hour CEP session, MAB also said it hoped that the government would contribute 50 percent to MAB’s annual budget which was about RM6.5 million for purposes like education and services. 

Kulasegaran said that currently the association only received RM300,000 from the government and it was not enough to cater to their needs.

- Bernama