Tamilnadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today made a series of announcements aimed at benefiting the differently abled across the State.

An official press release here said the Chief Minister has ordered scholarships to the tenth, eleventh and twelfth standard students of State-run and government- recognised special schools. This is to stop the discontinuing of studies by the differently-abled children.

As per the order, students of class ten and eleven would get Rs 1,500 as scholarship, while students of class twelve Rs 2,000. As many as 1,359 students would  benefit from this announcement.

Also, Jayalalithaa ordered to extend a scheme, which allows free travel in government buses by 2,390 differently abled students of training centres and nursery schools in 32 districts of the State. As per the new order, a person can accompany them in State-owned buses free of cost.

Also, instead of the existing walking sticks being given to visually challenged (which are coloured white at the top and red at the bottom), the Chief Minister ordered to give them fluorescent walking sticks.

'The sticks will be distributed to 5,000 persons and it will cost Rs 10 lakh,' the press release said.

Earlier, persons with disability percentage of 60 or above alone were eligible to get Rs 1,000 per month from the government as maintenance expense.

Now Jayalalithaa ordered reduction of it to 45, so that more number of differently abled can benefit, added the release.

The statement said that the government led by Jayalalithaa has been taking a lot of initiatives to equip the differently-abled in all possible ways.

Last month, the Chief Minister sanctioned Rs 50 lakh for the distribution of magnifiers for school students with visual impairment.

An official statement said, 500 visually challenged boys and girls would be given these magnifiers to help them read textbooks

These magnifiers can also be used on computers, laptops and televisions thus proving to be of much use to these students in pursuing their education.

In addition, she announced Rs two crore for renovation, maintenance work of the buildings at Government School for the Visually-challenged at Poonamallee near Chennai.

The funds would be used to build multi-purpose hostels, modern kitchen and maintain teacher-training laboratory and buying equipment for the library and the laboratory.