The New Life Welfare Association for the Blind, established with the motive to serve the blind, has been instrumental in getting married four of its members to sighted women. Besides 20 telephone booths have so far been allotted to the blind, according to G Sitaram Swamy, founder president of the 1996-founded association.

Except the treasurer, all the executive members of the association are blind. Started with a membership of 90 blind people, the association has more than 350 members now.

Swamy, a telephone operator in the Vijayawada division of the South Central Railway, told newsmen that the association imparted training in cane weaving to 38 members at the training-cum-production institute at Autonagar here and executed contracts from government andprivate offices for cane products by employing them.

As per the census report presented in Parliament in 1993, Andhra Pradesh stood fourth in the country in respect of the number of blind people. With a total of 9,95,318 persons suffering from blindness, the state had the ratio of 149 blind for every 1,000 citizens.

Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of blind people (21,96,692), followed by Madhya Pradesh (13,29,331) and Maharashtra (12,91,471).

Swamy said various banks had come forward to finance 34 of its members for self-employment. The assistant director for the Welfare of the Handicapped sanctioned Rs 3,000 each for self-employment projects.

``The state and Central governments should strictly implement the Disabled Act (of 1995). It should also be ensured that a ratio of 1:1:1 is being maintained while employing candidates having orthopaedic, hearing and sight disorders,'' he noted.

Technical training centres on the lines of ``O Louis Braille X'' script was not being developed in the state tofacilitate the blind, he said.

The association had recently approached the state government to provide some land at Ibrahipatnam here to start a technical-training centre for those who had lost their sight in the prime of life.

The founder president claimed that in 50 per cent of the cases cornea could be transplanted among those blind after the death of sighted persons.

``I am proud that my father's eyes were donated to an eye bank here which grafted one of them to a 15-year-old daughter of a rickshaw puller and the other to a local merchant's wife,'' he said.