President meets disabled citizens who beat the odds in Kolkata

A deaf and dumb waiter at a restaurant seems like an oddity but, at an upmarket eatery in Kolkata,  24-year-old Mithun Das has defied the notion.

Mithun, who can neither hear nor speak, is no less than any of his normal peers working at the restaurant.

More than 40 persons with such disabilities are successfully working at prominent commercial establishments in Kolkata with job profiles ranging from waiters to machine operators after obtaining training in speech therapy and lip reading.

One such group of three persons today met president Pratibha Patil, who is on a two-visit to the metropolis.

The president, upon meeting them, was equally curious to know how they are able to perform these interactive jobs which involves taking orders from customers and communicating with colleagues who are not acquainted with their sign language.

Patil praised the boys who have been beating all odds in their lives to earn a decent living and congratulated their trainer Nandini Sengupta, who accompanied them, and runs an NGO 'Utsava deaf and dumb' for the last twelve years.

24-year-old Bapi Mukherjee, who works in a school run by the NGO also asked the president for her autograph during the meet.

The president happily obliged and asked her staff to bring a notebook on which she wrote "best wishes" before giving it to Bapi.

21-year-old Shibani Adhikari, working at a government organisation and 10-year-old Pinky Rota, a student undergoing speech and lip reading training with the NGO also met Patil.

"Many of our students are successfully working at prominent establishments including the Howarh plant of Pepsisco, a popular city mall called Metro cash and curry, KFC restaurant and the Taj hotel. A number of students are also undergoing training presently," Nandini said.

She said lack of infrastructure is one of the major problems which hamper higher education of these students.

"For the blind, there are a lot of institutes which allow them to complete their graduation and post graduation. But such facilities are not available for the speech mute," Nandini rued.

Nandini said they were trying to explore computer education for these persons because they can easily perform data entry and other such jobs.