Calcutta, March 13: The government has asked a dozen departments to reserve 3 per cent of their jobs for the challenged.

Social welfare secretary S.. Haque today said: ?According to the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, all departments must do this. Though we are slightly delayed? we are ready for a start. The move has been explained to senior officials of the 12 departments.? In the second phase, the same instructions would be issued to some of the other departments.

The guidelines state that persons with loco-motor disability, blindness or low vision and hearing impairment would have three jobs in 100 reserved for them.

In the first phase, some of the departments included were school education, higher education, personnel and administrative reforms, municipal affairs and sports and youth affairs.

However, the jobs reserved would be those for which the Public Service Commission does not recruit and posts that do not offer much scope for promotion. ?The Centre has ordered a 3 per cent reservation in the Indian Administrative Service seats. So, ideally, the reservation must cover all categories of employees even for the state government, but we are starting off with the non-PSC and non-promotional posts.? Haque said.

The total number of such posts has not yet been calculated. Haque said the first step would be to identify the jobs and figure out the number of posts. ?The procedure has already started.?