Not doing enough to help children with special needs

SALEH AL SHAIBANY - saleh_shaibani@yahoo.com - Private companies in Oman are not doing enough to help children with special needs and official statistics prove it. The government’s statistics in the Ministry of Social Development show that less than RO 45,000 of cash was donated to the children with special needs in 2017, just 2 per cent more than the year earlier.

This amount is just 0.0002 per cent of accumulative profits of private companies in the country. Omani companies are put into shame compared to regional companies.

In the UAE, companies there donated a total amount of RO 3.4 million in 2017 for children with special needs, in Qatar it was RO 4.1 million while in Kuwait RO 2.9 million.

Local companies pay a lip service about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). They do much less than what they claim they do when it comes to children with disability. Senior managers pay themselves fat end-of-the-year bonuses and extremely generous sitting-on fees for their board of directors, especially companies that are trading in the Muscat Securities Market (MSM).

They even pay out when their profitability is low or when they go through losses regardless how strongly their shareholders complain. But it is never in their conscience to put more money in this noble cause.

They donate just a trickle so they can have more for their bonuses and sitting-on fees. The official statistics show that over 65,000 children are in the special need category in the Sultanate. No exact statistics are

available for children with disability because not all parents in Oman report the cases.

But educational institutions like Al Amal School and Omar bin Al Khattab School would tell you that most of them have little hope of enrolling to universities to pursue degree courses. In some cases, some do not even complete secondary school education.

The National Committee for the Welfare of the Disabled campaigns regularly for the children with special needs but very few listen or care. The struggle to empower people with disability starts with children born with both physical and mental problems. It goes beyond the lip service and the meetings of national committees.

There are not enough schools for the disabled children. The existing schools that cater for them do not have enough qualified teachers, either.

The common types of disabilities in Oman are children born with Down Syndrome, autism, mental illnesses, polio, degenerative diseases, deafness and blindness.

There are virtually no schools to cater for their needs. One or two in existence either charge exorbitant fees or teachers are not qualified for the job. Well qualified teachers would tell you an autistic or Down Syndrome child needs three times the attention one would normally reserve for a normal student. Then they are those with attention deficiencies, development and intellectual delays.

Sadly, the birth of a disabled child does not choose the earnings of parents. Hence, young couples with the first child as disabled go through a challenging time.

It starts with the psychology of raising such a child, sleepless nights and the last thing they need is to find finances they cannot afford for their education.

Parents are left at their own devices to deal with the everyday turmoil of raising a disabled child. If it takes a lot to teach such children in just a few hours a day it is certainly a battle field at home.

They need the power of mutual sharing to deal with the feelings of isolations, anxieties, confusions and even bitterness. Emotional and information support is as important as schooling for their children. As one parent says, “if you do not have a disabled child then you can never know the pain of raising one.”

It is time the private companies need to dig deep into their pockets and put in motion genuine CSR campaigns to raise millions a year, not a pathetic RO 45,000.

That figure is almost embarrassing and in all honesty, a disgrace.