They prove they’re differently-abled, not disabled!

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, May 30: This a howling success for North East College for Hearing Impaired (NECHI) that has achieved 100 per cent success, that too, without the yardsticks moved for them.

With their success rate in the HS fil examitions 2017, the students of this college, set up in 2009, have proved it yet again that they are differently-abled, not disabled. That they are hearing impaired does not mean that they will continue to lag behind in other faculties. They can rather outperform others.  

Nineteen of the 19 students of the college who took the HS fil examition this year came out successful – four in first division, 14 in second division and one in third division. The four students securing first division from the college are Kshyati Agarwal from Khetri, Janmoni Changmai from Sivasagar, Joya Sahu from Tezpur and Sushmita Bezbaruah from Goreswar. Of course they lag behind the likes of them who took the HS examitions last year from the college. Thirteen of the 17 students who had taken the HS examitions from the college in 2016 passed in first division and four passed in second division.

What is significant is that a degree college – North East Degree College for Hearing Impaired (Vocatiol) – was also established in the same campus in 2015. The academic session of the college began from 2016. All the 15 degree students of the college are in first semester.

The students with hearing impairment have been struggling to make a mark for them by fighting all odds. However, they are the ones who have not been getting the very infrastructure that may help them compete with the general students, said Asom Bodir Santha general secretary Tapan Kumar Sarma, through an interpreter. “We haven’t received any grants from the State Government for the past two years. In 2013-14 we got Rs 5 lakh and Rs 8 lakh in 2014-15. However, we got not a single penny in 2015-16 and 2016-17. We did send a proposal for a four-storeyed building of the college in 2016. No response has been received from Dispur as yet. The two colleges have 60 students together against seven teachers, besides two guest faculties,” Sarma said.