JEDDAH — The Jeddah municipality has been under fire for not granting enough areas of land to construct centers to provide care to special needs children. "The municipality is not supporting the disabled children and is delaying granting land within the populated areas to build centers for them," said Mohammed Al-Sharif, chairman of special centers for disabled children in Jeddah and Taif. "The municipality has completely disregarded a royal decree issued about 5 years ago asking it to grant sufficient pieces of land to construct centers to take care of children with special needs," he said. Sharif said under the royal decree, the municipality should specify a plot of about 10,000 square meters within inhabited areas for the construction of every single center. He said he had suggested to the municipality to give them a public park, which has been deserted for more than 17 years for the construction of a care center but so far there was no response. "Instead, the municipality proposed to give us a piece of land that is outside the populated area by about 50 km, which is in contravention of the royal decree," he said. Sharif said the idea of constructing special centers to provide care to the disabled children came to him after his experience with his own child who was enrolled in a disabled center in Jordan. "About 16 years ago, I used to visit my son, who was kept in a care center in Jordan for five years almost every month. When I have noticed that he was not making any progress, I brought him back to the Kingdom," he said. Sharif said with the help of a relative he constructed a center to provide care for the disabled children and was incurring all the costs until the government took it over in 2012. He also said the graduates of special education are not qualified enough to deal with the children of special needs particularly those with severe disabilities. He suggested that the graduates be trained for a year at least in any center for children with special needs before they are appointed teachers. Sharif also said a number of families do not know how to deal with their disabled children and keep them inside their homes while preventing them from mixing in society. "The families must recognize the disabilities of their children and must enable them to mix with society, which on turn should change its attitude to people with special needs," he said. "Disabled children do not need anyone's sympathy. They need trust and confidence to be part of society," he added. Sharif accused a number of private companies and establishments of faking the employment of disabled children to obtain more points within the Nitaqat program. "The companies do not allow disabled people to come to work and therefore are depriving them of the opportunity to mix with society," he said.
