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03/20/2006

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Aditi Tandon, Tribune News Service


Bharpur Singh with his family in his one-room tenement at Chak Kalan village, near Mullanpur, in Ludhiana. — Tribune photo by Saeed Ahmad

Mullanpur, March 17
Bharpur Singh can't wish away his existence though he prays he could. He suffers from day to day - a strange suffering that causes him no pain but leaves him bleeding.

Incapacitated while on job with the PSEB, he has long alternated between hope and despair. But the board has not spared a thought for him nor has it considered ways to rehabilitate him - something it is bound to do under the law. Its plea is that he is not a regular employee.

While the board keeps on finding ways not to accept Bharpur Singh's requests for a job, his life is slipping out of his hands. Living in Chak Kalan village near Mullanpur in Punjab, he spends his days counting his losses - from his vitality that crashed when he fell from an electricity pole while repairing it in May, 2002, to his 10-year-old daughter whom he had to give away to relatives so that she could be provided for.

In the past four years of suffering, Bharpur Singh has not encountered the word called "compassion". No wonder, he hates to hear what the Disabilities Act of 1995 envisages. It might demand from the state "not to terminate the services of those who contract a disability on job (irrespective of their part-time or regular status) or even discontinue their benefits…to create for them a job they can do…" and so on, but that does not serve any of Bharpur Singh's purposes.

He still remains confined to a bed fitted with wheels so his wife can easily move him around; he still wakes up to the horror of selling housewares to manage two square meals a day. Frustrated over his inability to provide for his wife and son, he still weeps his way to sleep. "But the authorities are unmoved. They say an employee who is not regular is only entitled to a compensation of Rs 3 lakh for a lifetime. But it is impossible to sustain with that amount. All I am asking for is a job or a benefit of pension. I have already given away my daughter in helplessness. I don't want to give away my life," says Bharpur Singh, who had to discontinue essential medical treatment due to dearth of money. Unable to bear his trauma, his wife, Sukhwinder Kaur, has now sought help from human rights activists who plan to take up the matter before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Veena Sharma, who will shortly petition the high court in this regard, says: "The Disabilities Act does not discriminate between disabled employees on the basis of their position in the organisation. Section 47 stipulates a provision of special status for those like Bharpur Singh who have been incapacitated on job. Denying such persons a job and pension is like condemning them to death."

Whether the PSEB understands this remains to be seen.

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