Though the central and state government stress on Unique ID for Persons with Disabilities” (UDID), many differently able people in the district have not applied due to lack of awareness.

UDID has been implemented in 2016 with a view of creating a National Database for PwDs, and to issue a Unique Disability Identity Card to each person with disabilities. After on line registration, it will be easy to deliver the government benefits to the PWDs, but also ensure uniformity.

The project will also help in stream-lining the tracking of physical and financial progress of beneficiaries at all levels of hierarchy of implementation – from village level, block level, district level, state level and national level.

The issuance of UDIDs seems to have hit a road block. The application portal has received 5066 digital applications, of which 3055 are still pending. Several people who have applied for the UDID card have been complaining about long waits while hundreds of PWDs are still ignorant about UDID so they have not registered their online application to obtain UDID due to lack of awareness and ignorance.

One Ramesh Chandra Sahoo of Bajpur under Jagatsinghpur block said ‘I have obtained physically handicapped manual certificate since 2014 but have not registered online for UDID as I never knew about it till last week”.

Another PWD person who has been suffered from locomotor disability has expressed his sorrow ‘the card is very helpful for us to get different benefits from the government but the process of getting it has turned tedious. I have been registered my online application for UDID card six months ago…I haven’t received it’. she added.

The state government, in 2017 and advised all the PWDs to apply online for their UDID card.

The district disability board consisting of the specialists like mental, orthopedics, ENT, eye, medicine and neurology has been constituted to conduct tests to check the degree of disability of disabled persons.

After being tested, this board issues disability certificate in free of cost and recommend their application for registration with UDID link.

But the Board did not function due to vacancy of mental, orthopedics, ENT, eye and neurology members and hence no recommendation of PWDs application online was done.

District collector Sangram Keshari Mohapatra recently reviewed the position and assured to expedite digital UDID work. He has directed the CDMO to convene the board four times a month to dispose applications.

The District Social Security Officer, Abdul Wahid Khan, said ‘despite frequent reminders to all BDOs sarpanchs, nothing has been done towards an awareness programme so steps have been taken to create awareness at the village and panchyat level about UDID to all PWDs’.