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Nathalia Jones

Step into any of the factories run by the WORTH Trust in Tamil Nadu and you'll find over 200 differently-abled persons working relentlessly at their various tasks...

Jeeva has just stepped out of a dream — three glorious months in Boston, for the fourth time in a row. The visit was no social call, but an assignment from the Perkins School for the Blind, which involved Jeeva and others in assembling components for the Brailler typewriter.

We are not talking about any hotshot businessman or dapper software professional but a physically-challenged, rural lad from Katpadi, with no fancy degrees behind his name. Step into any of the factories at the WORTH (Workshop for the Rehabilitation and Training of Handicapped) Trust in Katpadi, Tamil Nadu, and you'll find many more like Jeeva working away at their machines, contributing invaluable input to industrial giants such as EID Parryware and Brakes India Ltd. If you've ever wondered what went into the making of your two-wheeler brake pistons or where your Parryware closet covers came from, then you'll find the answer at this workshop in Katpadi.

At WORTH over 200 differently-abled persons work relentlessly at their various tasks to make such products... . from eye-precision components and mobility aid mechanisms to battery-containers and automobile parts. K. Sampath, for instance, a machine operator, begins in the engineering unit, then goes over to the plastics unit where he is given the delicate task of fine-tuning the toilet seat covers of Parryware. We watch him with bated breath as he runs the blade over the rough edges of the seat with unfaltering ease.

Isn't he scared that his hand might slip as he glides the blade across?

"No, it's not so scary, not when you've been doing this for the past 10 years," he says with a confident smile.

Like most of his co-workers, he has no academic background, but has undergone one year of non-formal training at WORTH. "Our basic training modules include a secretary course, inventory management and basic computer applications. This is to make them employable in the open labour market," explains Col. K. Radhakrishnan, Director, WORTH Trust.

The Trust, he says, was actually registered as the Swedish Red Cross in 1963 with the aim being to rehabilitate leprosy patients. With the disease having been brought under control, the purpose now is to employ and rehabilitate orthopaedically-handicapped people in and around Katpadi. The employees within the Trust are spread across a wide area of operations — the plastics unit, mobility aids unit, engineering unit and the Brailler Unit at Katpadi, an engineering workshop and training school for CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines at Pondicherry and a technical training-cum-production centre at Tiruchi.

Walking through any of these units, what strikes you most is the diligence and level of commitment that the employees reflect. Be it in 18-year-old Ezhumalai minutely measuring the diameter of a brake piston or in Venkatesan checking bushes and needle pistons for quality.

"I've been here for six months now and I am growing accustomed to the work," says Vijayalakshmi who is employed in the Brailler unit But doesn't she find carriage assembling more a man's job?

"Not at all, I can manage the job just as well," is her indignant reply. If she keeps up the pace and quality of work, she will be confirmed next year, bang on schedule.

The woman's retort reflects the confidence she has in herself and which is such a delight to encounter.

But then confidence is indeed the driving force behind the infectious enthusiasm that you see all around you. "Our outreach programmes seek to make the employees at WORTH self-reliant," says C. Antony Samy, Managing Director, WORTH Trust.

That they have achieved this feat is writ all over the faces of the recruits. C. Velu is bristling with new found energy and enthusiasm, after eight years of training and work in the quality assurance department. He has now gone up the ladder to become the supervisor of the division. And visually-impaired Malar is all brisk professionalism and assertiveness as she quality-checks one of the Brailler typewriters. "It's only after she gives the go-ahead that any of these can make it to the final stage of production," explains Radhakrishnan.

Has the one under her keen inspection passed muster? All wait with bated breath as she reads out the sentence typed on the new typewriter in chaste English. "This one is ok," she says. We compliment her on the fluency of her spoken English and she looks up saying, "After all, I studied in a convent."

If we thought that was impressive, we were in for a real surprise when we encountered the jet-setters at the Brailler unit. Jeeva, Kanagasabai, V. Mahendran... all of them have been to Boston on training for the Perkins Brailler typewriter. The excitement at their very recollection is palpable.

"My mother didn't believe I was going to the US till I got my passport. Even to me the whole thing seemed like a dream," gushes Jeeva.

So how did he find life there?

"I felt strange at first, everything was so different. But I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was unbelievable," he reminisces. Unbelievable, but true, as his colleague Mahendran realised when he finally boarded his US-bound flight.

"It was a new experience," he says modestly of his three-month stay at Boston. Just as they bowled us over, so did they impress the management at Boston. No longer does the Perkins School for the Blind manufacture the Brailler. It has left the job entirely in the safe hands of these industrious individuals, who assemble the components and export them.

Once again you encounter that quiet self-assurance while talking to D. Anbu, a cured leprosy patient and an employee at the Trust for the past 27 years. "With my condition, I never thought I would ever get a job and be able to sustain myself. I thought life was over," he says. Till he was enrolled into WORTH, where he underwent non-formal training and is now employed at the Mobility Aids Unit in Katpadi, taking home a decent pay-cheque of Rs 4,500 every month.

Against the steady drone of machines, the workers sprucely hop about from one section to another, not wasting a single minute. "We don't keep them idle at all, but give them exposure to all departments so that they are able to adapt to any task assigned to them," says Radhakrishnan.

"Have you ever seen a blind man at work?" he asks, and without waiting for a reply, leads us through the line of diligent workers to where John Selvaraj sits. While his blind gaze focuses on some unseen object in the distance, his deft fingers dart in and out of a tapering machine, engaged in sharpening needle valves. "A slight miss can cost him his fingers," says Radhakrishnan. But Selvaraj is no novice at the job and dispatches his lot of 1,000 perfectly tapered needle valves.

"I've been here for 14 years and I am familiar with my work," he says and gets back to sharpening the needle pistons with practised ease. He senses the disbelieving look on our faces and adds, "I come to work unescorted, and go back home on my own as well. 2 D is the number of the bus that I take."

Well, if anything that should be an indication that WORTH has succeeded in its mission to make its employees self-accomplished and independent individuals.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

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