Since ascending the throne, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman has vowed to do his best to serve the country and its people.
He is a monarch who believes that his post is not only an honor, but also a duty. And he never ceases to surprise his people in a pleasant way. Although the country and its armed forces are currently engaged in fighting the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen, the new administration didn’t overlook internal issues.
Our king is known for his support to people with special needs, as he strongly believes in making all possible resources available to integrate these people in society and help them become productive, rather than staying captives to their impairment. Even before his coming to power, King Salman had supported these people through King Salman’s Centre for Impairment Research and his patronage to the charitable organizations looking after these people.
Nevertheless, there are high expectations that the new era should witness a paradigm shift in services offered to these people.
But first of all we should make a distinction between people with special needs and the retarded. However, the care and facilities given to them should be the same. From a wide perspective, the concept of people with special needs is more comprehensive because it involves seeing the trees and not the forest only. When we talk about people with special needs, we mean all those who need special tools and facilities to enable to perform certain tasks. As such, children, pregnant women and injured sportsmen are included in this category, whereas impairment means exactly those who are retarded due to health reasons either by birth or due to a later sickness.
In the Kingdom, there are numerous centers and societies that look after people with special needs and the retarded. They all receive the required support, which is expected to increase in future.
But what is needed more at present is that this field should become more organized to ensure qualitative positive outputs by massing expertise to make it more successful. This could only be possible by establishing an independent body to supervise these centers and organizations; define areas of activities and direct them toward those areas that need more detailed and accurate work.
As such, we call for the creation of a special royal commission to be directly linked to the royal court. Such commission would have the authority to introduce more comprehensive services covering wider regions.
The reason that has motivated us to call for the establishment of this royal commission is that we want to be different from other countries. Therefore, we hope that such committee would be the nucleus for the creation of a special ministry for the people with special needs to make their voice heard at the Council of Ministers. Such ministry could play a vital role in activating these people and in making them part of the national human capital. Not only this expected ministry will be a step in the right direction but its creation will serve as a model for other countries to follow. It is a dream, but I am optimistic that it will become a reality under King Salman.
