Special needs people 'must not be ignored'

Prince Sultan, the winner of the Shaikh Rashid Award for the Humanitarian Personality of 2002, made the observation in an interview to be published in a special book on the Rashid Paediatric Therapy Centre (RPTC) which instituted the award a few years ago.

The book - Sultan... the Humane Prince - will be released during a ceremony to be held on May 27 at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel for conferring the award on Prince Sultan.

"I am proud to have won this prestigious award which was instituted in the country of the President, His Highness Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the benevolent man and which carries the name of the late Shaikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, a humanitarian personality with a rich history of humanitarian deeds," said Prince Sultan.

He said that the award with its noble objectives had achieved a high position at the Arab and international levels. He praised the organisers for promoting the objectives of the award in the Arab world, thus encouraging a noble competition in providing humanitarian and charitable works.

Prince Sultan highlighted the role and contributions of private sector in supporting humanitarian work and projects in accordance with the teachings of Islam. "The coming period will witness more efforts by private sector for supporting the voluntary and humanitarian work," he said, stressing that it would be dangerous to neglect people with special needs, "particularly the young ones who will feel isolated and will grow up hating their society".

Prince Sultan said he believed that a grown-up disabled person could learn to live with his disability and could possibly have a work suitable to his capabilities. "In our establishments special attention has been paid to disabled children because we believe that leaving poor or disabled children in a state of loss will reflect negatively on the society because they will hate their surroundings and feel bitter towards the society that neglected them while something could have been done to help them," Prince Sultan said.

He said that families of the children with special needs were usually preoccupied with them and thereby distracted from their other duties. "Here comes the role of specialised establishments for the care and rehabilitation of such children, which can turn them into productive people," Prince Sultan said, calling on all establishments looking after children, normal or disabled, to inculcate dignity of work in the little minds and to help them discover their skill and talent.

Prince Sultan stressed that knowledge should be provided to children in small attractive doses and in ways that linked them to their society and belief. "It is important to focus on spiritual aspects in the formative years of education and of children's upbringing. The reason for deprivation of the Western youth is the neglect of the spiritual aspect in acquiring education and knowledge," he added.

He stressed the importance of equipping the special care centres for the disabled with specialised manpower and the need for continuous cooperation among local, regional and international care centres as a means of improving the standard of services offered to the people with special needs.

Prince Sultan said that social and humanitarian establishments were being set up to join the humanitarian efforts, invest resources and conduct studies on humanitarian work.

"The establishments I am associated with have made great leaps in this field through organised efforts for providing educational aid, specialised training, medical assistance and care to the disabled, besides offering financial support to the needy," he said.