This effort is an off shoot to our successful launching of Pathway vocational excellence award for the Mentally Retarded which was held during March of this year, here we came across several mentally retarded adults who can be employed in various areas, it is our intention to continue this effort annually so that we can spot talents from all over the country and honour them as well as find suitable employment for them.
From the past several months we have been calling on many corporates, industries and organizations in quest of jobs for our boys and girls. The initial reaction in many of these meetings have been highly mixed, ranging from utter disbelief, they appear to be rattled and a couple of places they have been sympathetic too. We do understand all these reactions. We explained to them that children and adults with mental retardation can be helped to a great degree and they can be productive if they are trained well.We tried to dispel the stigma existing in the minds of these people as many of them confuse mental retardation with mental illness. Many of these representatives were requested to visit our organization so that they can get a first hand knowledge on the capability of our boys and girls.We are indeed grateful to many of these organizations who are now willing to offer us orders for production as well as jobs for our employable boys and girls.
We have been contacting several potential employers in the city, we have been having discussions with corporate houses and hotels trying to find slots for our boys and girls. Our efforts in this direction has paid considerable dividends. We are grateful to many of these organizations who have shown considerable interest to find solutions in this area. It is really heartening to see that the Vice President of Radisson GRT Hotel, Mr Vikram Kotah was highly forthcoming; he immediately showed his keen interest in offering employment boys in the kitchen. Similarly MrAnand at Slash Support Pvt ltd, has offered jobs for our boys in the house keeping section of the company. These responses are really encouraging. It was explained that our boys would be better employees than many of their able counterparts as they tend to excel in repetitive tasks which normally tend to bring boredom to many.
This opens a larger question, that is, whether we can match available jobs with right candidates, whether these candidates can work with minimal supervision successfully in the given jobs and also do we have the required number of candidates with required qualifications and abilities.All these pointers made us sit up and think of starting an EMPLOYMENT AND DATA BANK for the mentally retarded, that would collect data from length and breadth of this state as well as from the country so that we can seriously start working in this direction.. This will go a long way in offering training and employment to the mentally retarded.We also called upon organizations working in this area to furnish us data of adults with mental retardation with certain abilities so that we can go ahead and work towards collection of this useful data and ultimately find employment and placement for eligible candidates.
At the end of deliberations with M/S GRT Radisson the organization was successful in obtaining definite slots for mentally retrarded boys. The hotel has identified and has offered jobs in 1.The kitchen/hygeneine department and 2. In the laundry. Boys from Pathway were sent for regular training on the job and these boys proved themselves quite productive in the new environment. Jobs with a salary of Rs.3000/- per month was offered to these boys.
The “PATHWAY EMPLOYMENT AND DATA BANK FOR THE MENTALLY RETARDED” was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Minister for SocialWelfare, Government of Tamil Nadu, Dr( Mrs) Poongothai Aladi Aruna, Mr V K Jeyakodi, IAS, Commissioner for the Disabled, Govt of Tamil Nadu and others participated in this glittering function at Radisson-GRTHotel, GSTRoad, Chennai. This event attracted a considerable media attention, both from the press as well as from the electronic media at the state and at the national level. Key stories of open employment was relayed by the national press as well as the national TV news channels. The event also saw employment of four mentally handicapped boys in jobs offered by the corporate world such as GRT Radisson Hotel, the Orchid Pharmaceuticals, M/s Slash Support Pvt Ltd, etc.
