Mysuru: Even if you have one person with disability you have to provide with right support system; if you are not doing you so are discriminating the disability, said Dr. Meenu Bhambhani, Vice-President and Head-CSR, Mphasis,

She was speaking during special interactive session on “Employing and Engaging Persons with disabilities,” organised by CII Mysuru at a hotel here recently and said: “It’s not about numbers, it’s about equal opportunity. Start providing facility in the initial stage of employment of a disability person.”

CSR provides us canvas and freedom to experiment to look at innovate solutions and challenges disabled face. Regarding job opportunities for disabled people, apart from Mphasis where five percent of the total 27,000 workers are disabled, in most of the companies we can see hardly one or two percent disable people working, she said.

Modified vehicles for disabled: After lot of hardwork we managed to get modified vehicles through Uber called ‘Uber Axis’ which will be launched in March. Earlier it was Uber who provided pick up drop facility for disabled through its trained drivers. The facilities including transportation which were meant for disabled are also being used by oldage people, said Meenu.

CII Mysuru Chairman Arjun Ranga said, “In India, nearly 27 million people are living with disability with only 25 percent in employment and persons with disabilities represent the single largest minority group seeking employment. Therefore at CII Mysuru, we are serious about empowerment of persons with disabilities as we have highly-qualified talent. Hence, we from industry have to play critical role in realising the objectives of creating inclusive workplaces.”

Event Coordinator and Student of MYRA School of Business Bala Tripura Sundari, in her welcome address, said that the objective of the session was to bring in a positive perspective among the industry participants to engage and hire persons with disabilities into the workforce.

N.E. Sridhar, Head-CSR. Titan Industries Limited and Samrudhi Sridharan, Senior Specialist at EnAble India, shared their experience during the session.